


Sous Les Pavés

by lobst_r



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Activism, Alpha Enjolras, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Casual Sex, Complicated Relationships, Drug Abuse, Gender Issues, M/M, Mpreg, Multi, Omega Grantaire, Paris (City), Pining, Racism, Recreational Drug Use, Slow Burn, Socialism, University, marxism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:16:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 36,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22390054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lobst_r/pseuds/lobst_r
Summary: Grantaire, who seemed to be his polar opposite in many aspects of life, was often target of this scorn.The fact that he was an Omega didn’t help one bit, it only served to strengthen Enjolras’ resolution in disliking him. He would sooner chew off his own foot than offer the paternalistic courtesy afforded to Omegas traditionally, or the sick fascination reserved for rare male ones.*Or: A take on Les Amis in today's France (with a side of A/B/O).
Relationships: Combeferre/Courfeyrac (Les Misérables), Courfeyrac/Grantaire, Enjolras & Musichetta (Les Misérables), Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables), Grantaire/Éponine Thénardier
Comments: 60
Kudos: 87





	1. Bottomless ravines, or: The Wretched of the Earth

SCENE: Upon the steps leading up to a little café in Belleville, with streetlight painting the pavement a pale, garish blue. To the left, the wall is sloppily sprayed with political slogans: „ _Luttes Contre Les Frontiéres!“_ in a bright neon green _._ „ _ANTICAPITALISTA_ “ in a wan, paling yellow. To the right, a couple engages in the most audacious of public affections, exchanging spit fervently. 

TIME: Several hours after midnight, though the sky remains cloudy and the moon unseen. Dawn, however, seems to offer its presence against the murky, pock-ridden Parisian horizon.

PROLOGUE

[ _With difficulty,_ COURFEYRAC _exits the café with a glass of Kronenbourg in hand, smile indulgent._ ]

COURFEYRAC:

Oh, _putain_ , that wasn’t very suave, was it? You would think I’d have more of a drinker’s pride after so many years tormenting my fucking liver.

[COURFEYRAC _turns towards the little café, regarding its smudged, golden windows with affection._ ]

COURFEYRAC:

That’s our Musain. Fucking lovely, isn’t she? _Bon sang_ , I could grow to be one hundred and still love this place to bits. But you’re not here to hear me rhapsodize, are you? No, God no. You’re waiting for the introduction to drop, to hear the testimony of one who was there, from the very beginning. _Files de pute_ , it’s been long.

Well, behold!

[ _With a flourish,_ COURFEYRAC _bows and plonks down on the top stair, sliding a pair of sunglasses onto his nose._ ]

COURFEYRAC:

It all started a total of ten years ago. We were young, then. High on substances, for sure. That wasn’t ever just Grantaire, don’t let them fool you. Even Combeferre had his fair share of MDMA, I’m telling you. The _bac_ was over and done, we’d all left our boring _lycées_ behind and moved to Paris.

So far, so predictable.

But I know, I know – you want to hear about THEM. Of course you fucking do, who doesn’t? Love story of the century, isn’t it? Don’t tell them – don’t tell them I said that, eh? _D’accord_. Let me find the right moment to start. How about Grantaire and his guitar? That’s romantic as hell.

So you’ve got to know, Grantaire has a thing for dramatic flair. He’s the type of chap to – oh, I don’t know – stand up in front of a group and break out into song just for the disruption. Enjolras, yes, he’s also the type to speak his mind with the harshest words you can possibly find. That boy was vicious, and no, he didn’t mellow with age. But then again, he presented as Alpha way early, so that’s nothing special, as far as I’m concerned.

Anyhow, Grantaire.

We met him four months into our first semester, playing Manu Chao on his guitar at that one park. Buttes-Chaumont, it was. We – that’s me, Combeferre and Enjolras, because we’d already started our first reading circle on Marx and become practically inseparable. _Putain_ , we were such children.

[ _The squeaky door to the Musain opens and_ ÉPONINE _exits, checking her phone. Music pours out into the quiet of morning._ COURFEYRAC turns and leers at her _._ ]

ÉPONINE:

I’m heading home, loser.

COURFEYRAC:

You do that, Mademoiselle. _Bonne nuit_ , Alpha to end all Alphas!

[ÉPONINE _waves without looking, disappearing from sight on heavy boots._ ]

COURFEYRAC:

She’s a bitter one, never warmed up to me. Never got over Marius properly, a shame. But she’s something like Grantaire’s best mate in this humble little group we still call ours.

We’ll, you’d probably like to know: did sparks fly the first time they met? You bet they did. Though they were hostile sparks. Grantaire heard us talking – mind you, we were self-important little shits – and came over strumming away on his guitar, singing at the top of his lungs. _Merde_ , it was hilarious, because just imagine! I mesh well with Enjolras because we’re like-minded, and his thick skull needs to be balanced out occasionally.

Grantaire? Enjolras? They NEVER meshed, they’re so far apart they barely even touched. Except all the metaphorical contact was in the form of verbal grenades. Atomic grade insults. Fights to the death with words.

You get me? _Tu me comprends_?

Combeferre often says that we as Alphas ought to examine our reactions to Grantaire more closely. As in, how much of it is bigotry and the rear end of Alpha supremacy we’ve got instilled by society and our arsehole parents. Because he is very… unusual, for an Omega. Fuck, I sound like my _grandmère_. What I mean to say is: anything Omegas traditionally are, Grantaire simply is not.

[COURFEYRAC _finishes his beer with one swig, throwing back his head. The sunglasses clatter onto the sidewalk. He doesn’t seem to notice._ ]

COURFEYRAC:

Enjolras never had the patience for introspection, he has tunnel vision pre-installed, I swear to all the deities. I love him, he’s my friend, but there’d sooner be another revolution in France. Enjolras contemplating his Alpha nature, that’s something he’ll do right after dying of exhaustion. Which is never.

[COURFEYRAC _laughs._ ]

You probably think I’m a proper _connard_ , don’t you?

But I mean, Combeferre is right, in a certain regard. It’s hard to watch Grantaire get all drugged up. It’s difficult to notice him picking up strangers. Because… not because I was madly in love with him, or anything silly like that. But because it felt vulnerable, and as his friends, we worried.

Okay, fine. So there are some outdated designation roles still haunting my back chamber. But it’s easy to worry over Grantaire. Even though he doesn’t make for easy prey, certainly he doesn’t. With all the boxing, the running, the sexual confidence and his loud voice… I’m rambling. Fuck, I am.

And the sun’s coming up. Indulge me for being cheesy, but I love Paris in the morning.

[COMBEFERRE _exits the Musain. He is wrapped up in a jacket and mostly upright._ COURFEYRAC _motions for him to share his cold seat, leaning back until he’s half-reclining, as if on a chaise lounge._ ]

COMBEFERRE:

What have you been telling them, Courfeyrac?

COURFEYRAC:

Ah, you have no faith in me, _mon ami_. I was getting nostalgic, that’s all. Do you still have that joint, by any chance?

[COMBEFERRE _crouches down, extracting his portemonnaie. He picks through the contents and holds up a rolled joint with two poised fingers. Whooping_ , COURFEYRAC _digs through his own pockets._ ]

COURFEYRAC:

 _Putain_ , we need a lighter. Don’t move, I’ll go get us one. Curse the smokers, never present when most needed, eh?

[ _Struggling slightly with inebriation,_ COURFEYRAC _staggers inside again._ COMBEFERRE _remains seated, joint in hand. His brow is wrinkled in a thoughtful downward swoop_.]

COMBEFERRE:

I’ve known most of them for close to ten years now, Enjolras I’ve known for fifteen. It’s not easy to expose the faults of people you love so well. Courfeyrac has a knack of glamourizing things of the past, I suppose. He has also a rather large appetite for romance, _les histoires d’amour_. All the better when he himself is involved.

And he certainly was involved, as much as he likes to deny it now.

[FEUILLY _and_ BAHOREL _burst through the door, singing the Internationale with wobbly voices._ COURFEYRAC _follows them, flicking at a lighter while talking to_ JEHAN. _They huddle together under the glow of the streetlamp while_ COMBEFERRE _lights up and exhales a gust of smoke into the dusky sky._ JOLY and BOSSUET _join them after a while, teasing each other good-naturedly. Behind them,_ MARIUS _pushes through the door arm in arm with a tipsy_ COSETTE _, grinning at some witticism._ ]

BAHOREL:

Oi, Monsieur de Courfeyrac, pass along the blunt, will you?

JOLY:

And by all means, take care to pass it without touching me. What? _Ça me dégoûte_.

COURFEYRAC:

Oh please, it’s just a bit of casual spit-swapping, nothing that hasn’t been done amongst us before.

[ _The doors of the Musain open for a last time, and out pour_ ENJOLRAS _and_ GRANTAIRE, _caught up in a quarrel about Palestine. They join their friends while still arguing, bumping against each other in agitation._ ]

FEUILLY:

Grantaire, my man. Come here and have a drag, calm yourself down.

GRANTAIRE:

Ah, yes. Something much more worthwhile. You see this, O Great Leader of Mine? Ganja. For the heart and soul. _Non_ – not a word about the jewish state of Israel before I’ve had my smoke.

ENJOLRAS:

You lot encourage him!

BOSSUET:

He needs no encouragement, _mon ami_.

[ _The conversations resume, a low chatter with occasional bursts of bright laughter. Behind_ Les Amis de L’ABC _, the sun is rising in a luminous glow. The Musain is dipped in hues of orange._ COURFEYRAC _has a friend in each arm:_ MARIUS _to his left,_ JOLY _to his right. He cocks his head to the side and grins._ ]

COURFEYRAC:

Now you know us. This is who we are, who we’ve become, like it or not. Maybe I’ve piqued your interest in some more details? Because it isn’t just their story, it’s ours, too.

COMBEFERRE:

Let them judge for themselves.

[COURFEYRAC _exchanges a smile with_ COMBEFERRE, _and they turn back towards the centre of the circle they’ve formed_.]

*

Grantaire wasn’t always Grantaire.

He grew up cradled by his _jeda_ , which in turn meant that he grew up cradled by the extended Algerian community in Aulnay-sous-Bois. His first words were in Arabic (“habeet” and “wha’laah”) and by all accounts he didn’t learn to speak French until entering kindergarten.

He had a French father who remained thoroughly absent throughout the entirety of his childhood and adolescence, a father that had truly contributed only to his fair complexion and his last name. The dubious pleasure of both these assets came in handy once he entered the public school system. In a shithole like Aulnay-sous-Bois, looking white and having a proper French family name was advantageous, to say the least. Thus, the transformation occurred: at the age of six, Yacine Mohamed became Grantaire. At least during day time, he did.

After school, he kicked around a ball and pretended at being Zinedine Zidane with his friends, speaking in uncontrolled bouts of back-and-forth between his two languages. At home, he was darling little Yacine, doted upon and loved as most only children tend to be. He watched TV with his cousin Nour and dutifully did his homework, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.

His _Maman_ worked in Bordeaux and visited sporadically on weekends. As a grown-up man, Grantaire recognized her need for freedom. She was an Omega, just as he was, and the first generation to taste the cloying sweetness of financial independence. An unwanted brat to tie her down was just that – unwanted. By all means, his _jeda_ was his real mother, this he knew as something ingrained deep into his bones.

On weekends when his _Maman_ didn’t visit after all, he accompanied his _jeda_ through the high-rises and office complexes of Paris, vacuuming carpeted floors and wiping down gleaming surfaces. He loved her with all his might and in his memories these days spent amidst cleaning carts, office chairs and boxy computers were perfectly golden, some of the happiest moments of his life. 

Grantaire became Grantaire permanently and lastingly once he opened his acceptance letter to the _École des Beaux-Arts_. He’d done an outstanding _baccalauréat_ ( _mention très bien_ ) and shocked his extended family by applying only for fine arts and literature. He loved his uncles and cousins well enough, but he knew his calling didn’t lie with law, or medicine, or even politics.

He received state grants, enough money to live off. Unable to bear leaving his _jeda_ , he stayed and commuted from the suburbs for the first semester or so. That was the year he truly cast Yacine Mohamed off; the year he saw the run-down apartment he’d lived in all his life with newly polished eyes; the year he learned to speak the refined French of his fellow students. He still loved his _jeda_ , loved his cousins, loved his friends, but it had become acrid with shame.

Looking back, he realized the type of double-consciousness that had pressed upon his eighteen-year-old self with a vengeance.

He was ashamed of being from the _banlieues_ , of being Algerian, of having no cash to spend on nice things. And of course, he was violently thankful that no one could see a trace of those things upon him straight away. He was creamy pale in the winter and tanned a flattering golden bronze in the summer. His eyes were very, intensely blue, or so a few of the people he slept with told him.

In turn, he felt guilt and humiliation at his own shame. Slinking home to Aulnay at night, he often watched his _jeda_ sleep and fed waves of silent apologies into her dreams. She had given him everything, and his good-for-nothing absentee father had given him only a name and a pair of conveniently-coloured pupils. All in all, it led to a lot of drinking and smoking and excessive, recreative drug-use. Not to mention the awful, debilitating depression that started following him like a determined dog.

*

(2015)

The darkening winter sky was clouded with exhales. Enjolras forged ahead, hands shoved into the pockets of his coat, solid rolls of glossy posters tucked beneath his arms. One-hundred each, financed mainly through donations. Behind him, Feuilly was labouring to catch up with his slopping buckets of wallpaper paste.

“Enjolras, _attends!_ These bloody buckets are spilling over. Fuck’s sake, my gloves are fucking soaked.”

Enjolras made himself slow down, reaching to help his friend. Feuilly was good-natured and loyal, but he had a penchant for complaining about anything and everything. After almost five years with _Les Amis_ , Enjolras was more than used to it. 

They reached the Musain with their precious load, shouldering their way through the door with the practiced ease of frequent patrons. Inside it was piping hot and loud, people shouting over one another to get their words across. Courfeyrac was at the bar, ordering pints for everyone and chatting up a girl with his usual toothy grin in place. Enjolras rolled his eyes at him before approaching their regular table and dumping his armfuls with a satisfying smack. His friends exclaimed at him, calling out greetings.

“The prints are ready, then?” Joly pried apart the bindings, tucking out a poster to examine.

“Yes, fucking finally,” Feuilly groused. Combeferre was already sitting with a laptop booted, clicking through his saved tabs. Enjolras tugged the computer closer and called up a heavily marked map of central Paris, spinning the screen to face his friends. “Come on, then, let’s divide them up.”

“It is freezing balls out there,” Bahorel complained. “I’m doing Belleville, who’s joining me?”

A clamour of voices responded. It took close to half an hour until everyone had paired off, finishing their drinks and leaving one after another. Marius went with Éponine, agreeing to try their hand at the 15th, while Feuilly and Bossuet went ahead with their share of posters to cover Montmartre.

Combeferre did a head count after the first _Amis_ had left. “We’re an odd number,” he said. “Where’s Grantaire?”

Enjolras bit down the snide remark ready at his lips. “It doesn’t matter, I’ll do the 17th myself. It’s already half past ten, we’ve no time to lose.”

“We agreed on two to a team. One for pasting, one as a look out,” Combeferre reminded him before looking up with a smile. “No need, there he is.”

Skirting past the crowded tables, Grantaire came to a halt in front of them, exaggerating a bow. “ _Pardon Messieurs_ for my tardiness, I was held up by a few friendly faces –“

“Save it.” Enjolras barked at him, pulse speeding up with aggravation. It had started snowing outside, and flecks of melting ice were caught in Grantaire’s dark curls. He looked flushed and quite content, gym bag slung over one of his shoulders. The complete opposite to what Enjolras had been feeling all fucking day long. “Let’s go. _À tout à l’heure_ , Combeferre.”

They took the _métro_ while holding a silence icier than the weather could ever hope to be. Enjolras looked the other way whenever Grantaire made to speak. They went through half their stack in the driving snow, Enjolras brushing the posters onto walls and surfaces while Grantaire kept an eye on the street for police and security. As usual, the blessed silence found an ungainly end in Grantaire cursing at his empty cigarette box. Within a scant few blocks he was already turning to hapless passers-by, bumming smokes off them without even a trace of embarrassment. Finally, an Alpha lady in an elegant coat stopped for him, her painted red mouth tilting up into an indulgent smile.

“ _Fumez-vouz,_ _Madame_? I’m afraid I’ve lost my pack and mine is a rather serious nicotine addiction.”

“Here, keep them all,” she answered, touching the inside of his wrist while handing over her Gauloises. It was such a blatant gesture of dominance that Enjolras stopped in his tracks to stare at their exchange. Grantaire, however, smiled at her through lowered lashes, already lighting up and inhaling. He could scent them from his position a few metres away, the lady’s heavy musk and the grimy scent that trailed Grantaire where ever he went.

“Was that really necessary?” He asked once she had clicked away on her heeled boots. “You could’ve just waited for half an hour to buy some.”

Grantaire picked up the bucket, sardonic smile already in place: “I’m broke, Apollo. That’s the truth of it. It’s cheaper to just ask –“

“Well, you cheapen yourself.” He knew the words were misplaced as soon as they were spoken. Grantaire’s eyes hardened, and he turned away towards the next column. “Your arrogance is unbecoming, Enjolras.”

“I didn’t say –“

“Oh, I heard you perfectly well back there. You think I’m a slut, but we’ve both known that since the beginning. Now you feel I’ve somehow prostituted myself –“

“I said no such thing.”

“It was implied, no need to defend yourself.”

They bit at each other until the next poster was up, declaring public solidarity with the striking taxi drivers against Uber. Enjolras could privately concede that Grantaire had a point, but he would sooner die than admit it out loud. Instead, he told Grantaire to leave if his Alpha presence was so repugnant, and to leave the group altogether if he couldn’t stand the sight of him.

“Oh, but how could I ever live without you, Enjolras? Your presence is what sustains me, you keep me from giving in to the neoliberal despair of everyday life…” Grantaire pushed a hand against his chest, expression comically wounded. He’d always had a way with words, injecting sarcasm, warmth and acidity at will.

“Fuck off,” Enjolras responded, succinct.

By the time they’d reached the Musain again, aggression was pulsing through his veins like a living, breathing thing. It was supposedly an Alpha trait, this unfortunate penchant towards anger. Enjolras had trained himself mercilessly, suppressing his urges to lash out. Grantaire had been, for the last four years or so, the driving force trying it’s damnest to undo his practiced calm.

They reconvened with the others, and Combeferre read the latest news on the strike out loud for everyone to hear. Enjolras purposefully ignored anything Grantaire had to say, sitting with Joly and Bossuet, finally regaining his focus after that irritating episode. The clock ticked towards three by the time they were done, leaving everyone bleary-eyed and fatigued.

It was another night well spent, in Enjolras’ books.

*

Grantaire presented at sixteen.

He went through two excruciating heats under the mortifying supervision of his _jeda_ and his _tante_ Maisah before taking matters into hand. He went to the doctor’s and got the least expensive prescription of scent blockers; he went online and researched semi-legal heat suppressants before deciding against the risk; and last but not least, he went to his friend Boubacar from two doors down.

The last part was definitely the hardest by far, no pun intended whatsoever. Boubacar, a vivacious, large boy with a penchant for weed agreed to help him through his next heat after some cajoling. Grantaire got condoms and heat-contraceptives, Boubacar got a spare room at his cousin’s flat for a few days.

That was that.

Boubacar moved to Nanterre with his family within the year and Grantaire moved on to other Alphas from his neighbourhood. It garnered him quite the reputation. Male Omegas were rare. Male Omegas who openly fucked their way through the drab concrete social housing complexes of Aulnay-sous-Bois were unheard of. Grantaire, however, had by this time duly inherited the weed habit from Boubacar and was high as a kite half his waking hours.

Idle gossip could not touch him, neither could the stares, insults and groping attempts at his _lycée_.

His group of friends, a sizable amount before his first heat, dwindled until only a few were left. Outsiders and rejects, the lot of them, and Grantaire loved them all the more for it. He grew quiet at times and recklessly brash at others. Boxing was taken up, and it seemed a fitting outlet for the pent-up coil of nervous energy torturing him whenever there was no weed at hand. Either way, he was no longer welcome at the concrete football pitch that’d been his favourite haunt since childhood. Privately, Grantaire did push-ups until all the baby fat had sloughed off his body, and then some. 

On the first day of his last school term, a passing Alpha by the name of Hakim brushed a hand over his arse. Hakim, big hulking lug that he was, ended up with both his eyes swollen shut and his nose punched crooked. Grantaire was suspended for a month, but him being an Omega with wide blue eyes and a practiced pout excused many regrettable things, including this one.

He graduated, went to art school and honed his right hook to bone-crushing perfection. Heats were now either supressed when appropriate or spent with a rota of changing candidates he picked up at bars, clubs and cafés. The miraculous part about it all? Grantaire liked sex. Heat sex, regular sex, oral sex, hand jobs, breathless dry humping – there wasn’t a thing he tried that he ended up disliking. That was a comforting thought: no matter how much of a slut he was, at least he was a slut who greatly enjoyed himself.

*

“ _Allez_ , Enjolras, come on! It’ll be great fun, just imagine how surprised he’ll be!” Twin expressions of drunken anticipation peered down at him. It was that blasted time of the year: in between Christmas and New Year’s, when most people stayed home with their family and enjoyed quiet days of domestic bliss. Enjolras was not most people, and there was definitely no bliss to be had at his parents’ house.

Feuilly and Bahorel, the only other two _Amis_ who’d opted to stay in Paris over the holidays, stood clutching their beer cans, nudging him with the tip of their boots. Enjolras frowned at them. “Grantaire boxes? Are you sure you haven’t had a pint too much?”

“Oh, I’ve never seen him box. A friend of mine does some _tournées_ around the city, and he’s been telling me about this _very_ impressive Omega who trains at Farid’s. Small guy, a very charming drunk, vicious in the ring, vicious in the sack. At first, I thought he wanted to brag about his conquests, but then it clicked. _Putain_ , Grantaire does amateur boxing!” Bahorel was growing more animated by the minute, waving around his big hands, spilling beer without noticing. Feuilly, already properly smashed after pre-drinks at another pal’s home, nodded along gaily.

Enjolras felt his frown deepen. He disliked combative sports. He tolerated Grantaire most of the time, but this shaky tolerance had also been veering towards distaste recently. “It’s not that far off, is it?” Bahorel shook his head with enthusiasm. Enjolras cast his friends another dubious look before getting up with a sigh.

They ended up riding the _métro_ for a solid hour and a half. It would’ve been irritating, except that it wasn’t at all. Enjolras nursed his own beer and joined in on a haphazard discussion on revolutionary unions, the Spanish civil war and George Orwell’s account of it. Bahorel thought ‘ _Homage to Catalonia_ ’ a complete joke, while Feuilly grew moist in the eyes just talking about it (“At least he went and fought, and didn’t sit around in some hotel like Hemingway did!”). They all spoke about Buenaventura Durruti with reverence and took up a drunken rendition of “Ay Carmela” in disastrous Spanish.

A few people on the other side of the wagon joined in, students visiting from Toulouse with no particular goal in mind, and they ended up a considerably bigger group when they got off at some end-station in the middle of nowhere. Enjolras struck up a conversation with Cecile, a cheerful, gangly woman studying to be a social worker and didn’t think to look up until they were already entering some basement through a battered metal door and paying an admittance fee of four euros per Person.

“Oh, but this is fucking terrific!” Cecile cheered over the noise. Enjolras couldn’t agree, not in the slightest bit, but he elbowed his way through the sweating crowd and moved to stand in front of Bahorel’s towering form. Two Alphas were locked in a ramshackle boxing ring while a supposed referee in combat boots did his best to push them apart. The spectators roared while the competitors slinked off to their respective corners, gleaming with sweat.

“This is all very D.I.Y., very punk,” Feuilly promised him, swaying on the spot with his empty bottle in hand. “You want another drink, Enjolras?”

His first impulse was to decline, but with another look at the panting boxers he decided against it: “Yes, why not? Anything strong will do.”

Cecile and her friends were already joining in on the yelling and shouting, and within moments a resounding ring declared the end of the match and the slightly less bloodied Alpha the winner. Enjolras decided to drop his disgust and take it all in stride. He was, after all, surrounded by comrades and friends; the conversation had proven to be quite compelling and he had a large vodka shot in hand, courtesy of Feuilly. This he promptly used for a heartfelt toast to their new friends from Toulouse: “And in good time we’ll take a bus south, pick you people up while we’re at it and visit Barcelona –”

“Oh, but he’s too charming,” someone exclaimed, and they all cheered and clapped, breaking out into song once again. Musichetta, a native Italian with a wide, dimpled smile, knew the words to ‘ _Bella Ciao_ ’ by heart and led them for a few boisterous verses. The press of the crowd broke them from their reveries, and suddenly Bahorel was pointing towards the ring, eyes dancing with glee: “I knew it! _Merde_ , I was right!”

Enjolras half-turned, annoyed with the rude people jostling him left and right. His displeasure evaporated into the thick, salty air when he spotted Grantaire shaking his arms loose at the edge of the ring, clad in nothing but a pair of blue shorts. An elderly man was speaking with him, their heads bowed together. The shot he’d knocked back was rising to his cheeks with a punishing heat while he pushed his way forward to Bahorel, who was bending low to speak with an acquaintance.

“Is that the friend you came to surprise?” Musichetta asked somewhere from behind. Enjolras gave her a brief nod, eyes flicking back to where Grantaire was talking to his adviser, or perhaps trainer. His hair was tied back in a messy knot, tattooed shoulders on full display. Enjolras found himself staring openly. He’d never seen Grantaire bared like this, never cared enough to look.

“Oh, but he’s an Omega, _putain de merde_!” Cecile swore under her breath. “Does he have a death wish?”

Enjolras turned to Feuilly briefly before fixing his gaze back onto the lean muscles of Grantaire’s back. Indeed, between all the abstract coils and jagged shapes, Grantaire had tattooed a bold ‘Ω’ sign in faded black ink onto the top of his spine. “He has balls, our Grantaire,” Feuilly said, laughing with excitement. “ _Mon dieu_ , but the other chap is twice his size, fuck!” They all did a double take at the second guy standing in the ring, a true behemoth towering a full head over Grantaire’s dark locks.

The self-declared referee was back, motioning the boxers forward. Grantaire nodded at his trainer, tilted his head to the side and allowed the vulnerable expanse of his throat to be vigorously rubbed with a dirty towel. Enjolras kept himself from gaping at the scene, but only just so. The behemoth was already red in the face, gesturing with his gloved hands. Seconds later, the entire basement realized what the ruckus was about. Tendrils of an unmistakable, honeyed scent crept their way through the dank space, and with a jolt Enjolras grasped that the majority of the crowd was composed of fetid, inebriated Alphas, himself included.

“He has gone mad, completely, entirely mad!” Feuilly was still laughing, though he sounded quite shrill now. “He removed his fucking scent blockers, did you see that? How on earth…” Enjolras tuned his yapping out, staring at the elevated ring in horrified fascination. Humiliated and clearly fuming with anger, the large Alpha had decided to accept his challenger and save face. A new buzz sounded and the fight began. 

There was no better analogy for it than that of David and Goliath. The biblical parallel played itself out in Enjolras’ mind while he watched them dance with bated breath, hands clenched into fists at his side. The behemoth had superior height, strength and reach. Grantaire, however, was faster, crueller and unmistakably the better boxer. The bright, tart sweetness of his Omega scent did the rest, throwing his opponent off the tracks and the rest of the audience with him.

“Don’t they have weight classes in amateur boxing? What fuckery is this? Grantaire should’ve never faced this gorilla!“ Bahorel was growing quite purple in the face, spraying spittle with his angry rant.

“Grantaire knows what he’s doing,” Enjolras heard himself say, garnering shocked looks from his friends. But he realized the truth of his words as soon as they were voiced. Grantaire was the one leading their back and forth. He dodged jabs with lithe movements and delivered his own blows in rapid succession, retreating as soon as his opponent lost his temper. And lose his temper he did, during the first one-minute break at their respective corners.

“ _Putain!_ How can you let this whore dance around me like this? He should be disqualified just for removing his blockers. That’s a craven way of cheating his little arse to the prize money!”

Enjolras felt himself tense while the crowd rumbled. A single shout of agreement was heard, someone else laughing dry and low. Grantaire was gulping water, but allowed his trainer to take away the bottle at the provocation. There was anger darkening his face now, sharpening his features until he looked quite foreign. “Ah, _Monsieur,_ and do you take scent blockers? Do any of you?” Grantaire turned towards the crowd, spreading his arms in a sarcastic gesture of faux-welcoming. “No, none of you bastards do. You all reek like the devil, spraying pheromones like you spray shit out of your whoreson mouths. Come knock me out, then, if you’re tired of me.”

“I’d like to fuck him until he bleeds,” someone said to Enjolras’ left. He whipped around, ready to tear out some throats, but was held back by Bahorel’s tree trunk forearm. A look left and right showed him gaping, blanched faces. Musichetta had covered her mouth with both her hands, the whites of her eyes showing.

The buzz sounded again, and before he could properly react, the behemoth had already pounced on Grantaire, pounding him to the ground with a swinging left hook.

A resounding silence took over the space.

Enjolras felt ready to bulldoze his way forward, grab the behemoth by the nape and bash his face in. Blood was pounding in his ears. Three seconds later, what looked like definite victory was turned around when Grantaire heaved himself up, spitting blood and looking furious enough to kill. They spent the next minutes exchanging blows and the break after that trading caustic insults. Grantaire was called a whore, a bitch and a hole to be fucked. He in turn invented the most complicated terms to make his scorn obvious. The third round, the fourth and the fifth followed in similar patterns.

“ _Monsieur le Goliath_ , you may fuck me behind the dumpster once I’m finished with you, and we’ll call it charity. Though I’m sure I’ll barely feel your miniscule cock!”

The behemoth charged him with a series of punches, which Grantaire blocked with his forearms raised. It all seemed a blur to Enjolras, but within seconds the larger man was reeling back, collapsing onto his side with a low groan. The punk referee knelt down next to him. When he didn’t get up by the count of ten, a deafening roar rose among the spectators. Grantaire slumped back into the strings, hanging his head in apparent exhaustion. He perked up again when his elderly friend lit up a thick blunt and placed it between his lips.

“No fucking way!” Feuilly exclaimed before squeezing through the crowd. He managed to reach the slumped victor and seize him by a shoulder, yelling all the while. Grantaire seemed to be coming apart. All of him was drenched in glistening sweat, his hair curling and unruly, sticking to his temples in wet ringlets. Enjolras felt himself tense when Feuilly pointed in the direction of their group. The concern that had twisted his innards mere moments ago seemed laughably childish now. Grantaire was well. A bit bruised, a little worse for wear, but ultimately well.

He’d had everything under control.

_Putain_ , Enjolras had wanted to tear apart some stranger for talking about fucking him. But it had all just been trash talk, hadn’t it? Just the way things were done in places like this. An abrupt wave of anger rose inside him, and he swallowed a few times in order to quell his urge to storm out the door and be done with this night.

“Six hundred euros, that’s not bad! That’s not bad at all!” Bahorel’s booming voice jolted him from his haze. Grantaire was now standing amongst them, still bare-chested, still smelling like a thunderstorm of mowed grass, lemon zest and ripe figs. He was also looking at Enjolras, eyes wide and unblinking, face quite blank. “You fought well,” he offered stiffly after a collective pause in conversation. Thankfully, Bahorel dissolved the sour tension by pushing past him, enveloping Grantaire in a bear hug: “You were a beast, Grantaire, you were a magnificent beast up there!”

Another round of congratulations was offered and introductions were made. Cecile stood very close to Grantaire while talking to him, and Enjolras suddenly realized that she was an Alpha, and a very interested one at that. He felt foolish. The feeling came out of nowhere, catching him unawares. Musichetta offered to get a round of drinks and he ended up staying at the bar with her, talking about Italian partisans in the Second World War, Mussolini’s death and other safe topics. 

He only realized that she, too, was an Omega when he was already riding the _métro_ home with a thoroughly trashed Feuilly. Her scent had simply never registered properly in his head. It certainly didn’t linger the way Grantaire’s did.

*

Grantaire fell in love in the most debasing, awful way possible.

Two months into his first semester at the _École des Beaux-Arts_ he saw Enjolras in all his pale, blond, terrible glory talking outside the Musain with Combeferre. At this point, he had known neither of them, yet their intellectualisms and scholarly language drew him to stand a few paces away from them, listening in with a cigarette dangling at his fingertips. Under the assault of Enjolras’ soliloquy he felt breathlessly thrilled and horribly inadequate. Grantaire had been an avid reader, a literary whiz-kid in comparison to the rest of his peers in Aulnay-sous-Bois. Being presented with these beautiful, eloquent, carelessly arrogant Alphas only showed him what he’d long suspected: his pretence wouldn’t last.

The next time he saw Enjolras was by chance, something he still privately thanked Allah for despite his complete lack of religious fervour. It was at a bland, hipster café where Grantaire picked up shifts whenever his acquaintance had any left over. He rang up Enjolras’ order, tried to hide the nervous tremor in his hands and eavesdropped on the ongoing phone call while making a triple espresso. The gorgeous blond Alpha was organising a reading circle on Young Marx, to be held at the backroom of a bar. He was hoping for a good turn-up.

Grantaire went to the library straight from his shift and checked out seven different books by and on Karl Marx. He went online and read through badly designed websites, clicked his way through archives and watched three documentaries in one night. That was his self-initiation into the world of radical leftist ideology. He ended up never joining the reading circle, too scared of what might happen, but he came out of his research frenzy a changed person.

For the first few months or so, Enjolras remained unattainable in a wonderfully bitter-sweet way. Grantaire worked his way through Marxist theory, then post-colonial theory, then queer-feminist theory. He read about Omega-liberation and the political strength of riots. He cried hot tears that stung his eyes and cheeks while reading Frantz Fanon’s _“The Wretched of the Earth”_.

While one door opened towards the world of literature and political theory, another closed. He felt further away from his _jeda_ in Aulnay-sous-Bois, from his friends and cousins than ever. The one-hour bus ride turned into a black pit of tar he had to wade through. Sometimes, he felt as if he stood at an irreconcilable chasm. A bottomless ravine that neatly divided the world he’d grown up in and the sparkling Paris of Enjolras.

By the time he joined _Les Amis de l’ABC_ , Grantaire already considered himself a useless wreck, though a very well-read one. His general despondency and obsession with radical politics translated into an erratic performance on the front of his art, which for some reason pleased his tutors and professors to no end. His works with the least thought received the most praise, bolstered by his ever-growing bullshitting abilities. It made him lose all respect for the institution that was supposed to educate him for the next five years.

Coincidentally, Grantaire befriended Jacques-Antoine Feuilly, who also refused to go by his first name. They got high together after sharing a smoke outside a club, Feuilly explaining in great detail that he was named for both his grandfathers, who were also both avid _Front National_ voters and outspoken racists. Both Jacques and Antoine could go fuck themselves, he told Grantaire and consequently endeared himself forever. They started hanging out regularly after another few run-ins, and finally Feuilly announced that Grantaire should join his group at the Café Musain.

That was how he set eyes on Enjolras again, and finally learned his name.

*

(2016)

The clock read half past one when Enjolras looked up from his laptop, eyes tired and dry. It took him a few moments to determine what had made him leave his tunnel of concentration. Courfeyrac was rustling a bag of pastries in front of his face, nose red from the cold outside. “Have a bite, you workaholic efficiency monster.”

They put on Combeferre’s prized Bialetti mocha pot, grabbed their last few packets of cheese and set out a spread on the kitchen table. Combeferre himself emerged once the heavenly smell of coffee started permeating the small apartment they shared. “I’ve been putting together a dossier on the Revolution in Rojava,” he told them while they ate. “And I’ve compiled a few introductory articles on Kurdistan. I thought we might do a discussion round next week.”

“Good work, comrade!” Courfeyrac tilted his chair backwards, balancing on two legs while popping an edge of gruyére into his mouth. He was being very cheerful, even for his abnormally high standards. “Meanwhile, I was at Grantaire’s monthly match. _Putain_ , what a sight to behold! He completely eviscerated the other guy, you should’ve seen the look on him.”

Enjolras took a bite from his greasy croissant, ignoring Courfeyrac. For some reason, the words ‘Grantaire’ and ‘boxing’ didn’t sit well with him. “Democratic confederalism is a good choice of topic, Combeferre. I think we should definitely include some original writings by Öcalan, in that case. I downloaded a booklet last month…” 

“It’s kind of easy to forget he’s an Omega, you know. I mean, he takes scent blockers around us. And then all of a sudden, you’ve got him exerting himself on stage, barely dressed, smelling like a fucking _pâtisserie_.” Courfeyrac sipped from his coffee, still grinning a little. Combeferre and Enjolras were now both looking at him, the revolution in Rojava temporarily forgotten.

“What are you trying to tell us here?” Combeferre asked slowly.

“I want to ask him out!” Courfeyrac said, smiling brightly, as if this was the most self-evident conclusion.

“You want to ask him out. Because he smelled good while boxing.” Enjolras knew his voice was icy and dripping with contempt. He felt like there was lead in his stomach, a good-sized heavy ball of it. “Grantaire, who’s never taken a single thing seriously in his entire life.”

Courfeyrac seemed somewhat thrown by his reaction, but he shrugged it off in his usual careless manner. “Well, I know _you_ don’t like him, Enjolras. No one’s asking you to join us in bed, jeez.”

Enjolras stuffed his mouth with pastries and said nothing. Leave it to Courfeyrac to come up with preposterous ideas like these. He started talking about Abdullah Öcalan and his writings again, just to keep Combeferre from wearing his concerned face. They all went to bed, eventually, though Enjolras failed to fall asleep for the longest time.

Everyone in their secured group chat agreed on the new reading material, and by Friday evening they’d booked the back room at the Musain for the umpteenth time and ordered seven large Pizzas to go. Jehan couldn’t make it, as he had a poetry reading engagement across town, and neither could Bossuet, who was tutoring. Marius was bringing a friend, though the way he texted suggested the friend was far more than just that.

Cosette turned out to be a sweet Omega girl, translucently blonde and exceedingly lovely. Éponine, who was famously known for her gigantic crush on Marius, sulked at a back table, typing on her phone with long brown hair obscuring half her face. Enjolras registered all of this in passing, thoughts jumping between the texts they’d picked out and the last meeting he’d come from, a weekly plenary session mandatory for everyone active at the city’s refugee law clinic. He was also tired enough that the idea of sleep was becoming increasingly foreign.

The ball of lead he’d felt briefly the previous week swung back with a vengeance once Grantaire sauntered in and was promptly waved over to sit with Courfeyrac. The two of them huddled close together made a severely irritating tableau. The idea of Grantaire dating Courfeyrac, hanging around their apartment, hogging the couch and using the kitchen table for his projects was growing more unappealing by the second. There wouldn’t be a moment of silence left if those two smug bastards started shagging.

“Are you alright?”

Enjolras sat up straight, turning to nod at Combeferre, who was watching him with the barest raise in his eyebrows. “ _Mais oui,_ I’m just tired, is all.” After a moment of silence, he conceded: “And I’m especially tired of Courfeyrac and his antics. He’ll go on until there isn’t a single Omega in our vicinity he hasn’t tried to fuck.”

“You still think he wants to ask Grantaire out?”

Enjolras nodded towards the table in the back. From the corner of his eye he saw Courfeyrac ruffling Grantaire’s hair, leaving his hand buried in the mass of dark curls while leaning in close to speak. Grantaire was flushed pink across the bridge of his nose, something that hardly ever occurred without half a dozen pints. “And I bet you he’ll be successful.”

“Ah, I don’t know about that,” Combeferre said mildly, thumbing through a few pages.

It turned out to be one of those nights with everyone vying for time to speak. They switched between current affairs (“Erdogan is notorious for his anti-kurdish stance, it’s a powder-keg waiting to blow up!” – “When has that ever not been the case? Listen…” – “He’ll encroach on the territories along the Syrian border. I say Erdogan is the largest threat to Rojava.” – “Large than Daesh, are you quite certain?”), Öcalan’s writings and the reports on autonomous community building in Syria. The whole thing was conducted with the usual helping of interruption, shouting and empathetic body language. They were many things, but first and foremost they were an unruly bunch.

Grantaire spoke up once the discussion turned towards women’s and omega liberation: “ _Alors,_ don’t you think it strange that Öcalan, a male Alpha, is the ultimate authority on this? Are there no other writings you could’ve picked?” He waved around a fistful of pages, the corner of one mouth turning up in a mocking smile. “I know this isn’t a popular opinion, but I dislike the way he’s been enshrined by the movement. And how everyone conveniently forgets the purges that occurred within the PKK in the 1980s. But first and foremost: Why would I read the opinions of an Alpha on the liberation of Omegas? Convince me! They make up most of the thinkers, poets and philosophers anyways, why should their voice be the loudest when concerned with feminist and Omega issues?”

Enjolras could feel himself bristling: “So you think political opinion has to be tied to identity?”

Grantaire laughed out loud, his eyes dancing with mirth. It was a mocking sound. “No, but I think we should have enough space here, at our Musain, to step back and notice how some opinions are always readily read, and accepted, while others simply do not exist. Why the fuck are we reading Öcalan’s opinion on Omega liberation? Have all Kurdish Omegas been silent on the subject?”

“I picked our reading material,” Combeferre offered, hands raised in a placating gesture.

“And I thank you for it,” Grantaire shot back. There was colour in his cheeks again, and he kept his eyes fixed on Enjolras. “There is a constant refusal in this room to speak about identity politics. There, I said it.”

“This is neither the place nor the time,” Enjolras countered, placing a hand on Combeferre’s shoulder. “And it is not our subject matter. We’d derail from any sense of coherency if we just veered off discussing whatever adjacent issue came to mind.”

“You are not, and I cannot stress this enough, getting the point. _Putain,_ you’re so far away from it, you wouldn’t be able to tap it with a two-metre pole if I handed you one.” Grantaire stood up, grinning at everyone, though his hunched shoulders betrayed the tension he felt. Enjolras narrowed his eyes at him, aggravation spiking until he could barely move his jaw with all the teeth-clenching. “You want to understand societal issues on a structural level,” Grantaire said with the faux-patience of a kindergarten teacher dealing with a particularly slow toddler. “Well, I’m addressing a structural problem. In this group. _C’est clair, non?_ ”

It derailed from there. Enjolras had to briefly leave the room for fear of bashing Grantaire’s face into the leftovers of Joly’s vegan pizza bianca. It wasn’t the first time they’d clashed – hell, he couldn’t remember an issue on which he didn’t clash with Grantaire on some level or other. They’d had their share of outright verbal duels, yet this one felt more personal. He told Combeferre so on their way home, Courfeyrac having gone to the cinema.

“He did address a valid issue, you know.” Combeferre paused to inhale the murky smoke from his customary joint, handing it over to Enjolras with a careful thumb and forefinger. He took the joint but didn’t take his hit, pausing beneath a streetlamp to think. If there was one opinion Enjolras valued above all, it was Combeferre’s. The one friend he could trust to never be cowed, to always keep a level-head and speak with a frankness that would’ve been hideous coming from anyone else.

“It doesn’t matter what identity an author has. If their writing has merit, it should be read. Substance should always be placed above all.”

“I agree with you. But I also agree with Grantaire. He told us that identity impacts the way people perceive, and write, and analyse –“

“He said no such thing.”

“Of course he did. And if he were anyone else but Grantaire, you’d be capable of hearing it, too.”

Enjolras bid his time by sorting through his coat pocket until he found a lighter and flicked on a flame to reignite the joint, breathing in deep. “He’s so fucking contrarian, all the damned time. He enjoys it.”

Combeferre was walking again, smiling slightly, for whatever reason. “He does enjoy it, I’ll grant you that.”

They spoke about other things, but Enjolras couldn’t shake his argument with Grantaire off the same way he usually disregarded bawdy jokes or blatant provocations. The anger inside him felt like an ache, something he constantly came back to prod at until it flared up again. Later that night, just before falling asleep, he remembered Courfeyrac and his plans to woo Grantaire.

That only added to the irritation swelling inside his chest, like a balloon threatening to pop.

*

SCENE: On COMBEFERRE’S neatly made bed, with the curtains half-closed against a crimson sunset. Slow beats vibrate from the speakers mounted on side-tables while the artificial glow of a reading lamp casts a yellow spot against the wall, illuminating an edge of a poster, its colour undiscernible.

TIME: Six o’clock in the afternoon. The day is Saturday.

[COUFEYRAC _is curled up against the headboard, snoring softly._ COMBEFERRE _sits to his left, a thick book open in his lap, glasses pushed up into his hair._ ] 

COMBEFERRE:

I always loved living with Courfeyrac and Enjolras. We slotted together immediately, in a way people rarely do. We balance each other out. Enjolras was slow to like Courfeyrac, but I knew he’d become our friend from the moment we met.

[COURFEYRAC _stirs, groaning slightly before stretching half-off the bed. He blinks at the darkness before sitting up, yawning a few times for good measure._ ]

COMBEFERRE:

He took something last night and crashed. Please excuse him.

COURFEYRAC:

It was E, maybe. I think it was. _Merde_ , I feel like a black hole.

COMBEFERRE:

You used up all your endorphins, _c’est tout_.

COURFEYRAC:

Yes, _maman_. Shit, I could eat a horse right now. They keep telling me I’m getting too old for this, and fuck me, I’m inclined to agree.

COMBEFERRE:

You told me some eight hours ago that no one is ever too old for drugs. You also sat on my lap and pretended that I was your grandmother feeding you apple sauce.

COURFEYRAC:

Fuck, I cuddled you, didn’t I? Was the touching inappropriate? Enjolras would kill me if I dared to violate you. You remember that one time with Grantaire and the crazy stalker guy? _Putain_ , I thought he would crash through the window and annihilate the sod. He was totally ready to pounce him into the ground, rip out his spleen or something!

COMBEFERRE:

It was for Grantaire. Were you surprised?

COURFEYRAC:

You know what they say about hindsight, but yeah, everything just makes that much more sense once you realize. I know you all laughed at me for going after Grantaire back then. Don’t deny it, I know you did. You laughed on the inside, Alexandre Cédric!

COMBEFERRE:

For your information: We’re both called Alexandre. And so is Joly. So the use of a second middle name is mandatory if you insist on calling us by our given names.

COURFEYRAC:

And F.Y.I.? It never happens. I barely react now when my own mother calls me.

[ _Yawning again,_ COURFEYRAC _slides back into a horizontal position before tugging the duvet loose and burrowing under the covers._ ]

COMBEFERRE:

Isn’t it amazing how long it took us to get here?

COURFEYRAC:

An hour on the métro, changing trains three fucking times. That’s how long it took us. And this poor Monsieur here had to guide me through my high and keep me from soliciting old ladies or dying in a ditch somewhere. People in Paris don’t give a flying fuck, let me tell you that.

[COMBEFERRE _takes his glasses off and lies down as well. They both look up at the darkening ceiling, breathing slowly._ ]

COURFEYRAC:

Yeah, but all fun and jokes aside, I also think it’s amazing. But I think it’s even more miraculous that we’re here at all. So many fucking years, and I’m still on your bed, and we’re still friends, and I love you like a brothah from another mothah.

COMBEFERRE:

Don’t try it with the slang again.

COURFEYRAC:

Come on, let’s sleep. They want to hear about Grantaire and Enjolras, not us boring side-characters, am I right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Information on the revolution in Rojava and the Kurdish movement can be found [here](https://internationalistcommune.com/learn-from-rojava/) and [here](https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-revolution-in-rojava). This [documentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqo2MX3vf6M&app=desktop) also comes highly recommended. 
> 
> Good articles on the history and development of the Parisian banlieues: [(1)](https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/11/the-othered-paris/543597/), [(2)](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/22/nothings-changed-10-years-after-french-riots-banlieues-remain-in-crisis), [(3)](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-other-france).
> 
> And [here's](https://archives.history.ac.uk/history-in-focus/Migration/articles/house.html) a brief take on Algerian immigration to France.


	2. Dubious Foundations, or: Justice for Adama Traoré

(2016)

A creeping itch at the base of his spine was the sensation that finally brought Grantaire back to the land of the living.

He stumbled a little, half-falling over a pile of books, disoriented and bleary. The last traces of the weed he’d smoked were still retreating from his brain, leaving behind a glaring headache. The thick painting brush dropped from his aching, stiff hand and he followed by sitting back onto his haunches.

Red.

He’d painted in reds. Dark, bloody splotches of it, pink, blushing hues and aggressive slashes of reddish browns. He’d gotten his hands on a sharpie at one point – jagged, black lines crossed the canvas repeatedly. At the centre of it all, the loving rendition of an almost pre-Raphaelite visage, crowned by glorious golden hair and distorted with horrible rage.

“ _Putain_ ,” Grantaire said to the cluttered room, his voice breaking midway through the word, before reaching for his ash-tray. He lit up the stub of his last joint, sucking the hot smoke deep into his lungs. A tap on his neglected phone told him that he’d been hunched over in front of the canvas for the better part of five hours. There were a handful of missed calls – Eponine, Feuilly, Jehan. A loose acquaintance asking him to cover an early shift at a _Quartier Latin_ bar.

A lick of heat in his lower abdomen called back the rather unpleasant reason he’d been forced to resurface from his creative haze. It was half past ten in the morning on a Tuesday. Outside his bare windows, dreary rainfall cloaked Paris in a dismal blur. Grantaire hadn’t slept in over thirty hours; he sure as fuck didn’t know when he’d last eaten; he had been painting Enjolras, _again_ , as he was wont to do; adding on top of this rather large pile of debris that made up his life, he was going into heat completely off-cycle.

Instead of thinking on it any further, he staggered to his unmade bed and fell asleep with the stub of his joint still clenched between his paint-crusted fingers.

The missed calls on his phone had doubled by the time he woke again. The unforgiving sun was already half-way down the horizon, though the rain had turned into a fine drizzle, misting everything with a glossy sheen. Grantaire lost time staring at the scene, cataloguing its peculiarities into his mind. He was jolted by the insistent vibration of his phone, going off with yet another call from Feuilly.

“Grantaire, _qu’est-ce que tu branles?_ Where the fuck have you been all day, eh?” Feuilly was quite out of breath, the sounds of Parisian traffic audible in the background.

“I was painting! _Calme-toi,_ stop it with the shouting.”

“We’re meeting at seven, get your arse to the Musain.”

“Fuck,” Grantaire said empathically. They were holding a joint meeting with some union organizers from the local CNT. “ _Putain_ , Feuilly. I’ll have to pass today. I’m going into heat, my cycle’s completely fucked over. I only had one six weeks ago, and now it’s back and I’m fucking burning up.”

“Shit, man.” He could hear Feuilly sucking in a breath. “Have you got someone? Do you need anything?”

“I’m great, everything’s good here. I’m all covered.” Grantaire listened to himself speak, wincing occasionally. He was very, very far from all those things he’d just proclaimed. “Fuck off and focus on the politics already, I bet you’ll get shedloads done without me whining in the corner.”

Grantaire let out a groan once they hung up. There was a deep ache in his limbs, a hurt that made sitting up difficult. He dragged himself beneath the miniscule shower of his tiny apartment, willing his heartbeat to slow down. His flatmate, Adrien, was travelling in South America. It was ideal, really. He could spread out as much as he wanted, call over one of his heat-buddies and have it over with.

As the masochist that he was, Grantaire found himself getting dressed haphazardly and daubing his neck and wrists with a thick layer of medical scent blocker. Half an hour later, he was already cycling his way to Belleville, delirious with the balmy spring air and the sudden exertion of biking. “You’re a damned fool,” he self-admonished in Arabic while nearing the Musain. “I know I am,” he answered himself in French, laughing aloud with self-deprecation.

First things first, his eyes found Enjolras. It was a practiced repetition, a ritual of sorts that had established itself ever since Grantaire first chanced upon him almost five years ago. His scent, the sharp, clean tang of it, crept up his nostrils, both a balm on his aches and hot coal stoked into the glow inside his gut.

He was talking to one of the union organizers, face pinched with focus, nodding in time to something. Predictably, he was so devastatingly beautiful that Grantaire faltered in his already unsteady steps, trying his best to breathe evenly while approaching the seated group. A few people turned and raised their hands in greeting. Feuilly shook his head at him, gesturing silently with an incredulous expression on his freckled face. “The fuck are you doing here?”, he whisper-shouted. 

Grantaire settled in the far back, where he usually sat on his own. His phone immediately buzzed with a series of insistent messages.

_| you semll like a cnady shop man |_

_| Go the fcuk home |_

He made a rude hand gesture at Feuilly, slouching back in his chair. Zings of pleasure-pain were travelling down his spine, little zaps of hypersensitivity that vibrated through his entire body in ripples and waves. Halfway into his irregular heat, being this close to Enjolras felt like reaching out to pet a lion, though the beast in this case was he himself. Would he lash out and jump Enjolras? Would he grovel at his feet and beg for a single touch? Or just sit in paralysis, torn between acrid humiliation and perfect bliss?

Grantaire’s musings were interrupted when Courfeyrac sat down next to him without fanfare.

“ _C’est bizarre_ , how dedicated you’ve become all of a sudden. Is it unionism that’s finally ignited the flames of revolution?” If looking at Enjolras was like cowering before a blinding entity, painful yet inevitable, gazing at Courfeyrac was quite simply a pleasant affair. He, too, was agonizingly handsome, with his chestnut curls and dark brows, but it was an agreeable sort of attraction.

“I’m all for the cause. Any cause, every cause,” Grantaire said, dry as can be. He returned Courfeyrac’s stare, and found his flushed face reflected in pupils blown wide and dark. “Ah, _d’accord._ My blockers aren’t working quite as they should?”

“You’re distracting. More to some, less to others,” Courfeyrac smiled, toothy and amiable. He had suavely placed his arm around Grantaire’s chair, the woodsy scent of cologne mingling with the warm amber of his arousal. “I propose that we get the fuck out of here, what do you say? We’ll read through Combeferre’s protocol if we want any details on the meeting, say, in the next three days – “

“My heats typically last longer than that.”

“All the merrier, then!”

Grantaire glanced up at him, heart thudding in his chest. He was tempted. But from the corner of his eye, he could sense that discussions had come to a lull, _Les Amis_ and their unionist guests turning towards the two of them. Enjolras was leafing through a pamphlet, frowning at the disturbance. Of fucking course, he didn’t have time for Grantaire’s nonsense, let alone his heats. Grantaire the nuisance, Grantaire the Omega that couldn’t stay the fuck home, Grantaire who fucked whoever would have him.

It was the immediate bite of humiliation that finally pushed an answer out of him. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Courfeyrac. Imagine if it goes badly, how shall we ever face each other on the barricades when the time comes?” He tried to make light of the situation, aware that all eyes were now trained on them. 

“It won’t go badly,” Courfeyrac insisted. All the same, he was already retreating, ever the gentleman. “Well, anyhow, you have my number…”

“Would you mind if we continued?” It was Enjolras, and his cutting voice chilled Grantaire to the bone.

An awkward silence ensued. Bahorel and Feuilly exchanged looks, with Joly wincing openly at the hostile display at the other end of the room. Grantaire got up with a jolt, grabbed his jacket and performed an exaggerated wave: “ _S’il te plait,_ don’t let me keep you from these mighty important issues!” He had spoken to the room in general, but it was Enjolras he looked at, glaring into unimpressed, narrowed eyes for a few heartbeats before turning tail.

Grantaire pushed his bicycle mindlessly for a while after that, aching all over, not quite caring which way he went. Enjolras’ disregard smarted inside his ribs like a vicious cut. _Merde_ , but what did he expect from coming tonight? A sudden interest lighting up Enjolras’ eyes? A dawning realization that Grantaire was sexually available and more than willing? It all seemed laughably childish now, trudging along with his hair wet and his pride in shambles. 

The evening crowd had thinned, leaving the streets deserted. Everything inside him itched for a joint, so he stopped in the middle of the empty sidewalk and rolled up there and then. He didn’t properly calm down until he’d taken his fourth drag, staring ahead into nothing while yet another gentle drizzle misted the slate grey pavement around him.

“ _Putain!_ Is that you, Yacine?”

Grantaire stopped in his tracks, turning around just in time to faintly recognize a wide grin and a sharp nose before he was already enveloped into a hug that blocked out everything else. He couldn’t tell which part it was that knocked him speechless: the shock of a familiar face from another lifetime or the heavy Alpha musk, a sharp mixture of cigarettes, weed and cinnamon that assaulted his senses with the force of a sledge hammer.

Boubacar had grown to be as tall as he was wide, a formidable sight to behold. Grantaire had to tilt his head back to look at him. There was scruff on his chin and his afro was braided into neat plaits, a lengthy procedure he’d loathed as a teen. His dark eyes were crinkled with genuine delight. “I can’t believe it! You haven’t changed a bit! I recognized you right away.”

It was a true Godsend. Maybe Allah, for all that Grantaire didn’t believe in him one bit, did show mercy on occasion. The sting of Enjolras’ disdain finally receded into the background. “Bloody hell, _c’est vraiment toi_ , Boubacar!”

“Who else would I be? You look well, Yacine. No, correct that, you look really fucking good, alright? Hell, it’s been, what? Five years, six?” Boubacar placed a giant paw onto Grantaire’s shoulder, shaking him a few times. “Do you live around here? But honestly, my man, why are you out on the streets? Not to be rude, but aren’t you going into heat? I can smell it; your scent is still the same.”

Grantaire grinned up at his old friend: “An emergency, or something like that. I was going to find someone to fuck me through it. I’m off cycle, you see.” 

“Ah, did you already find someone, then?” The suggestive twinkle in Boubacar’s eyes didn’t go unnoticed. Grantaire stepped in closer, emboldened by the sudden warmth, the friendliness and easy acceptance after so many years apart. “Nope, nobody.”

It all went rather fast after that. Boubacar cycled like the devil while Grantaire balanced himself on the carrier in a precarious crouch, holding onto broad shoulders while giving out the directions to his shared flat on the outskirts of town. They fucked on the strip of floor that passed as their entrance hall, tumbling between boots and sneakers, catching up all the while (“ _Merde,_ Yacine, you’re studying art? You turned bougie on me!” – “You can’t be a baker, I mean, you’re _baked_ for sure, but you can’t _bake!_ ” – “I’ll make you a fucking baguette from scratch, you little shit!”).

Everything became somewhat blurred after the first three times, but Grantaire couldn’t have cared less. He was on all fours, draped across his futon, when it occurred to him in a rare moment of clarity that he hadn’t thought about Enjolras for at least a few hours now. That was already enough of a victory to make him clench around the considerable girth of Boubacar’s knot, coming on the spot. 

*

Enjolras was named for Charles de Gaulle.

It would become one of many parental decisions he toppled in the course of his adolescence. Yet at the day of his birth he wore the cumbersome, lengthy name of Charles Emmanuel Enjolras de Montbrun. His parents, who had moved to the wealthy town of Archamps on the Swiss border in order to rear their precious only son, bought him half a cellar of expensive wine at his first birthday. 

It all went downhill from there.

He turned out to be a troublesome infant, a belligerent child and a veritable terror as a teenager. Little Charles was spoilt rotten and simultaneously pressured to perform, both of which he dealt with rather badly. A non-exhaustive list of the numerous activities he was forcibly engaged in included: horseback riding, piano lessons, modern dance (on behest of his artistically inclined mother), pottery (a suggestion from his senile great-aunt), German lessons, archery (his father’s idea of toughening him up) and last but not least – therapy.

Throughout all these ordeals and the years they spanned, Enjolras remained stubborn as a mule and uncompromising as the true radical he would develop into eventually. Aged nine he shaved his head with a straight razor after receiving an involuntary haircut. At twelve he ran away from boarding school (the first of many escapes to come), walking twenty kilometres to the local public school in order to be enrolled for the fall term. By the time he presented as an Alpha at fourteen, he had already read enough about _Président_ de Gaulle to thoroughly reject him and everything he stood for in post-war France.

He straight-out refused to be called Charles and stuck to the part of his last name that bore no links to the supposed minor nobility on his father’s side. 

He passed through a series of _écoles privées_ and was diagnosed without qualms as a child with grave behavioural issues. This especially extended to figures of authority, formal or informal: teachers, headmasters and snobbish popular schoolmates were all targets of his scorn, and of his unnaturally sharp tongue. He could cut through all of them with an imperious eloquence, disregarding etiquette, personal feelings and, at times, common decency to get his point across.

Briefly, during his second year abroad in Switzerland, he was thought to be an autist by an especially harried Latin teacher. This amateur verdict was, however, quickly refuted by medical experts once they spoke to him in person. Charles, or Enjolras, was merely very mature for his age, incredibly well-spoken and above all, aggressively opinionated. He performed well academically when it suited him, often driving the various _éducateurs_ to distraction with the prickly questions he asked. 

When a topic caught his interest, there was no stopping until every last detail was imprinted on the back of his eyelids. The only teacher that ever did take a liking to him, a certain Monsieur Lamarque, gifted him with some twenty books, spanning Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant and Hegel before finally reaching Marx. Young Enjolras cried after reading the famous last passage of the Communist Manifesto, though he did not consciously realize this until it was pointed out to him.

_“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”_

*

SCENE: In a staff room at the _Assistance Hôpitaux De Paris_. A few nurses are scrolling through their phones and sipping on coffee from thermos mugs in the background. Outside the bare windows, a greying sky hangs dreary and oppressive.

TIME: Five past eleven on the most terrible of all weekdays.

[COMBEFERRE _and_ JOLY _are sitting together, eating sandwiches from paper bags._ JOLY _checks his phone every so often, frowning occasionally. He seems harried, eyes barely open, long hair coming undone from the worn-out elastic._ COMBEFERRE _looks quite awake in comparison._ ]

COMBEFERRE:

So, you’d like to know how I met Enjolras? It isn’t a terribly exciting story, I’m afraid. But our break isn’t very long, anyways.

JOLY:

I think the story is awesome! I mean, you and he are so close it’s often hard for us to imagine that you had to actually meet, at some point. Do you want some wet wipes for that?

[COMBEFERRE _accepts numerous things from the pocket of_ JOLY’S _doctor’s coat: a handy-sized bottle of disinfectant, a packet of tissues and said wet wipes._ ]

COMBEFERRE:

We roomed together at boarding school, that’s all there is to it. Enjolras had been transferred around for quite a bit. I remember disliking him on sight – it’s easy to think him arrogant if you don’t know him very well. He turned that around after a few days by lending me books.

JOLY:

No wonder you formed a reading circle first thing after coming to Paris.

COMBEFERRE:

Reading was our salvation. We would’ve turned out insufferable, otherwise. It’s very easy to be a pretentious little shit when you’ve had the upbringing we had. Ninety percent of our school mates were wealthy, and male, and Alpha, and white. If not for books, our thoughts would’ve stagnated right where our parents wanted them to.

JOLY:

I never asked – do you still speak to your parents?

COMBEFERRE:

I do. I never saw the sense in cutting all ties, the way Enjolras did. He does things in absolutes, even if it means punishing himself and others. There was no middle ground in his head, and I’d openly say that it was his greatest flaw. I suppose it’s changed over the years, though. No one is ever static, least of all him. 

NURSE:

Alexandre, could you check on Monsieur Fiery in room five, please?

[COMBEFERRE _and_ JOLY _both look up, the latter letting out a startled laugh_. _The_ NURSE _claps a hand over her eyes, sighing theatrically_.]

NURSE:

 _Mon dieu_ , I keep forgetting. It’s you I mean, of course, Joly. One of these day’s we’ll have to remember…

JOLY:

 _Merci_ , Agathe, I’ll be right along. Thank God Courfeyrac went into law, I couldn’t handle a third Alexandre at the clinic.

[JOLY _squeezes_ COMBEFERRE’S _shoulder briefly. Then he hurries out the creaking door_. COMBEFERRE _finishes wiping his hands, eyes pensive_.]

*

(2016)

Éponine knocked back her fifth shot, grimacing briefly before falling into a sideways slouch, head lolling. “ _Joyeux_ fucking _anniversaire_ to me,” she announced in a remarkably clear voice, though the attempt at spreading her arms in a sweeping gesture fell flat.

Grantaire tugged at her until she was curled into his side, glassy eyes focussing on him with a reproachful force: “I’m really, awfully pathetic, aren’t I?”

“I wouldn’t necessary say so, but then again, I was also black-out drunk for the entirety of my last birthday. Pot, meet kettle.” Grantaire shook Éponine’s limp hand a few times for the comedic value, earning himself a nasty look from glassy eyes. “Oh, no. _Ma choupette_ , don’t cry on me. Really, all these tears? Over a fucking golden retriever who thinks the World Bank could be doing, I quote, _some good_ in sub-Saharan Africa?”

“He does need to read more,” Éponine conceded in an uncharacteristically small voice. She’d picked this night of all the nights to shed her prickly armour over three bottles of wine, several tall glasses of clouded pastises and five shots of vodka. Grantaire, dutiful friend and borderline alcoholic that he was, had matched her drink for drink. As a result, they had lost a considerable amount in both euros and coherency. The tiny bar in Goutte d’Or had moderate pricing, but they were formidable drinkers when the right mood struck.

“You know they live around here, right? You precious Enjolras, and fucking Stick-Up-My-Arse Combeferre, and Mr. Come-Suck-My-Dick Courfeyrac.” Éponine hiccupped adorably, turning to stare at him. “The precious golden trio, one more perfect than the other – no problems with money, no problems with school, no problems with romance… oh, but I stand corrected! You turned down Courfeyrac, didn’t you? Why ever would you do that, by the way? Never like you to turn down a good shag.”

“ _Ta guele_ ,” Grantaire elbowed her half-heartedly, finishing half his beer with one swig. “You can bitch all you want tonight, _c’est ton anniversaire_ , but I’m not obliged to answer you.”

Éponine took the encouragement and downed another shot, going off on a rant about _Les Amis_ , their faults and failures. She was truly at her lowest while drunk, any semblance of a filter fucked to hell and discarded. But it was also her twenty-third birthday, and the fourth day of her heartbreak over Marius finally getting together with his lovely Cosette, so Grantaire persisted and finished his beer.

Éponine was one of the first friends he made after moving to Paris. They’d bonded over their pessimistic world views and fringe identities upon the first meeting, growing close the way children usually did: fast and without a single mite of hesitation. The unrequited love they both dragged around like shackles also helped in the gradual forging of an undying friendship.

“I don’t feel like an Alpha, I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do with this useless knowledge – _Félicitations_ , you’re a female Alpha, because we’ve measured the hormones in your blood and apparently that’s what you are now,” Éponine had told him the first time they got properly drunk together, at a flat party. “And apparently that’s also enough for someone not to consider me, because they’re straight, or whatever, and they don’t do Alphas. _Putain_ , what is that even supposed to mean?” 

That someone, of course, turned out to be clueless, heart-of-gold straight boy Marius Pontmercy. As far as sexualities went, he was the vanilla type – an Alpha who preferred to stick his knot in female Omegas. “Be glad that you don’t have heats,” Grantaire had told her straight out. “And be even more glad that you’re not part of a fetishized one-percent minority.”

They had an argument about it, but it fortified their budding friendship to the point of turning them into casual fuck-buddies for a while. They’d stopped for the last year or so, because Éponine’s devotion to Marius had grown to depressingly unbearable heights and she’d needed a break from any sort of physicality. 

“You know what I dislike most about Les Amis? They play at being revolutionaries and bringing about social change, but fuck, most of them haven’t worked a day in their lives! They know fuck all about shelving at Carrefour or doing midnight shifts at a gas station in bum-fuck-nowhere. They’ll be doctors and lawyers and politicians, _Maman et Papa_ will buy them a nice apartment once they graduate. Honestly, all they do is sit around and read, then argue like it truly matters one iota what Engels wrote about the origins of the family!”

Grantaire sighed into the matted hair on the top of her head, and said, in a complete reverse of his usual flippancy: “You talk like we’re not part of _Les Amis_ , Eponine. I recall you having a lot of feelings about Engels.”

She went on a little more before staggering over to the bar with another twenty euros. They did a few Tequila shots, licking the salt off each other’s forearms. She started staring off into the distance again after a while, eyes glossy with tears that fell whenever she hiccupped.

Grantaire kept them closely entwined, chest aching in sympathy. He would’ve thought it utter insanity to pine so uselessly over so many years, except that he was in a very similar position himself. Enjolras simply hadn’t fallen in love the way Marius had, all grand gestures and moony eyes. The sod had literally announced at a meeting that he had met a girl more beautiful than light, a girl that made his heart soar and the air taste fresher.

It was nearing half-past twelve. The bar was emptying gradually, the barkeeper eyeing them with a weary stance. Grantaire quirked a smile at him before urging Éponine up. She had to be helped into her jacket and walked to the door, but the chill of night air seemed to wake her somewhat: “Let’s go to mine, it’s closer.”

They half-carried each other to Barbès-Rochechouart station, only just catching the last train north. Éponine sat on his lap unabashedly and started kissing him with a fierce determination and a fair amount of spit. Grantaire let himself be kissed, sighing inwardly before cradling her face closer and leaning into it. Making out with Eponine was always something comfortable, mostly calming and only faintly arousing.

A sharp wolf-whistle broke them apart.

Éponine let out an annoyed growl, turning to eviscerate the bastard that had dared to disturb them. Grantaire, however, stilled as he looked straight at Boubacar and none other than Hakim, the preening Alpha he’d punched into half a coma during his time at the _lycée_ in Aulnay-sous-Bois. It seemed that his childhood was very persistent about catching up with him this year.

“Yacine? Fuck me sideways, is that you?” Hakim still had his crooked hook of a nose, and he apparently still worked out enough to burst the seams of his shirt. “You’re still getting lucky, eh? Nothing’s changed, _putain_ , I haven’t seen you in ages!”

“No way, man, what a coincidence, I was meaning to call you just last week,” Boubacar stood up and approached them, grinning ear to ear. “My hours are mad, fuck work, I’ll tell you that. Hakim, I met Yacine last month, it was just like good old times. He’s studying art, can you imagine?”

Grantaire could feel Éponine’s eyes jumping between the three of them, and he answered with a put-upon lightness: “Hakim, I see you never got that nose straightened out.”

Hakim, to his bewilderment, started laughing and speaking in Arabic, clasping his shoulder: “Oh, but you were right to punch me, I was an insolent little wanker. Hell, we haven’t seen you back in Aulnay for years! Not even for Eid! My cousin Said sometimes asks after you. He’s just come back from Algiers: _Inshallah_ – we’ll all catch up!”

“ _Inshallah_ ,” Grantaire echoed weakly. He could feel Éponine’s stare boring into the side of his skull. She was briefly introduced as a friend, everyone let loose some more pleasantries and phone numbers were exchanged. They all got off at Porte de Clignancourt, promising to keep in touch, to meet up when Cousin Said returned. He even made a date with Boubacar to get a pint the next weekend.

“Who,” Eponine asked once they were alone again, sober as can be. “The fuck is Yacine. And – since when do you speak Arabic?”

“I’m Yacine. Yacine Mohamed, to be exact.” He glanced at her quickly and away again, heartbeat picking up. “And I’ve always spoken Arabic.”

“You’re _maghrébin_? But. But why did you never say anything?” Her eyes were wide and hurt, but they remained thankfully dry. Grantaire shrugged and cast his eyes down. They remained silent until they’d reached the one-room apartment she was currently occupying as a temporary sublet. Éponine exploded at him once the door closed behind them.

“I thought your first name was Alain!”

Grantaire leaned against the tiny kitchen nook, shielding his eyes with both hands. He glanced at Eponine’s livid face through his fingers, stomach filled with lead. “I never said it was Alain… you just assumed.”

“Well, you let me assume! You let everyone assume. I mean – do you think so little of me? That I would care whether or not you’re…” 

“I’m Algerian, on my mother’s side.”

“See? I didn’t know that. And it wouldn’t have mattered very much, except that now I’ve the feeling I don’t know you at all!” Éponine gestured around wildly, poking a finger into his chest a few times. She was half a head smaller than Grantaire, but anger always made her swell in size.

“Maybe I didn’t want anyone to know!” Grantaire bellowed back, shame transforming into anger in the blink of an eye. “ _Files de putes_ , like it’s fucking easy to sit with the lot of you and pretend I’m part of the group, and pretend I don’t bloody see the judgement because I’m a drugged-up, alcoholic wreck and an Omega to boot. I know they all think I’m a slut, and I know for sure that I’m an impostor –“

“That’s fucking unfair. You’re conflating everyone else with Enjolras. I know _Les Amis_ have their limitations. They can talk theory and study the thoughts of old white Alphas, but you, Grantaire, you’re the only one who’s rejected the bourgeois life style –“

“That’s because I was never bourgeois to begin with!”

“And I fucking love you for it!” Éponine was standing up close now, craning her head back until he was forced to look into her slightly blood-shot eyes. “You’re my best friend, and I love you. I love you for being a slut, and for dumpster diving, and I would never give a fuck whether you’re Algerian or German or from Mars –“

Grantaire barked out a laugh before leaning down to kiss her. They broke apart breathing heavily. Éponine gripped his head with both hands, nails digging into his scalp: “You’ll come to bed now and tell me all about your life before Paris.”

So he did.

*

Enjolras didn’t have sex for the first time until he was nineteen.

He was still living in his first apartment (a tiny five square meter room that barely fit a single bed) near Porte de Montreuil and was gradually warming up to one Alexandre de Courfeyrac, who had a much more spacious room just down the street and a very impressive collection of books that he shared freely.

His interest in sex had been ruthlessly squashed after his first rut at fourteen. The complete loss of control was, in Enjolras’ not so humble opinion, the worst thing that ever happened to him. No amount of pleasure was worth the humiliation of losing all sense of rationality. He succumbed to the bodily urge of painting the entire dorm room with his come for a year and a half before going on long term suppressants, summarily disregarding all advice his doctor gave on reproductive health.

Once that ordeal had passed, fucking ranked even lower on his list of priorities.

Moving to Paris changed that. Though to be fair, it was mostly Courfeyrac who did the changing for him. In a complete opposite to Enjolras’ experience, Courfeyrac had spent his ruts with a wide variety of bed partners of varying genders and designations. He proclaimed that rutting was one of the most important things in life, only superseded by eating and sleeping, and possibly Xbox. His open nature, good looks and unbridled confidence made him a winner at any courting game.

Combeferre was more subdued in his affairs, but he never the less had his share of involvements. All of these things, combined with the growing trust between the three of them, culminated in Enjolras having his dreaded first time with a mischievous girl from Courfeyrac’s friend’s Spanish class. She was studying violin at the _Conservatoire de Paris_ , had very long, very delicate hands and a snarky voice.

It turned out mostly fine.

Enjolras took care to observe all the etiquette he’d learned through detailed hearsay and pornography. She came before he did, he didn’t crush on top of her and they both reassured each other that everything was _fine, just fine_ repeatedly. It would’ve been possible that there simply was no _spark_ , no chemistry between him and the violinist. Yet in the years that followed, it became apparent that this elusive spark simply wasn’t to be found when it came to him.

To Courfeyrac’s horror, he stopped bothering with it, getting along _just fine_ with his own left hand. There were a million things to be done, and for his ruts he had suppressants aplenty.

*

(2016)

Spring slipped into summer, and Grantaire started seeing more of his old friends again. Boubacar was mostly to blame – he called them up, one by one, arranged casual meetings and attended his boxing matches with a frequency that bordered on regular. Besides smoking up with them and getting fabulously drunk on cheap canned beer, Grantaire was constantly smudged with coal and smeared with paints, despairing while trying to finish his final portfolio. Sleeping and eating became bothersome chores.

Jehan burst out laughing when he skidded into the Musain on a warm Wednesday evening, late for the meeting as usual. “You know half your face is blue, right?” The others turned and greeted him with well-meant jabs. Feuilly tried to rub at his cheek, earning himself a few smacks to the head. Eponine was absent, as she had been for the past month or so. In her stead, Cosette had come, sitting with Marius in an airy summer dress that matched her blonde curls perfectly.

Grantaire averted his eyes from her out of solidarity with Eponine. Instead, he found himself looking at Enjolras again. Somehow, the sight of him never got old. The straight slope of his nose, the stubborn set of his brows. He’d cut his hair short since the last time Grantaire had seen him, a trim look that made him all the more graceful.

“Comrades, our cause always comes first, the showers come second, or third, right after a nice glass of Kronenbourg.” Grantaire announced to the group with a flourish. “Don’t look at me like that, Enjolras. Or am I not dignified enough for reading Gramsci?”

“You’re fine,” Enjolras said, sparing him a curt once-over. That was all Grantaire got for the evening. He considered engaging in a debate about Gramsci’s idea of hegemony, but the lack of sleep finally caught up with him. He’d painted through the last two nights and went to his job busking tables all the same. The speed he’d ingested through his nostrils earlier kept him half-alive for a while, but drugs only lasted for so long. That was why they were so damned expensive.

Half way through it he got up and stepped outside, swaying on the spot slightly. He lit up a smoke and checked his paint-smeared phone. It had exploded with near a dozen messages and half as many missed calls.

Boubacar picked up on the second ring, out of breath and swearing up a storm: “Listen to this, I’m calling as many people as possible. My cousin’s friend Adama was taken into police custody yesterday. _Putain_ , the pigs say he’s had a heart attack, he’s dead. Do you hear me, Yacine? HE’S DEAD. They’re saying – listen to this, that they’ve already arranged for his body to be sent back to Mali!”

“Fuck,” Grantaire said out loud. The balmy air of early summer had gone cold, all of a sudden, and the cigarette had dropped from his hand. He was shaking, he realized absentmindedly, going to lean against the nearest wall. “Fuck, Boubacar, what can I do? How can I help?”

“The family, they’re doing a protest tomorrow. A peaceful protest, in front of the police station in Beaumont-sur-Oise. We don’t believe a fucking word they’re saying. You have to come, and bring your friends, everyone you know.” Boubacar was ranting now, in a frenzy. “They can’t kill us and expect us to believe their lies, they simply can’t. We’ll protest until the truth is found out, I swear to God!”

He promised to come, promised to bring every last person he knew. The minutes ticked by while Grantaire remained up against the wall, heart thundering. Then, as if electrified, he jolted up and staggered back inside, thoroughly awake. Everything was as he had left it. Bossuet was speaking, tapping a finger against a text passage, so Grantaire went to stand behind him. He could feel Enjolras’ irritated stare, but this was, for once, something more than provocation.

“ _Je suis désolé_ , but I have to interrupt this rousing speech.” Bossuet gave him the finger with a roll of his eyes, but Grantaire forged on. Boubacar’s voice echoed in his head, anger, fear and helpless dread all rolled into one. “A friend just called me. A young black man by the name of Adama was killed in police custody last night. The police say it’s a heart attack and haven’t let the family see his body yet.”

Enjolras’ frown deepened, but Combeferre leaned in, the murky light of the café glinting off his round glasses. “Where was this?”

“In Beaumont-sur-Oise, the nicest of all the fucking Banlieues!“ Grantaire said. His voice was getting louder, and he took a deep breath, decidedly not looking in Enjolras’ direction. “The police has been so kind to organise a speedy transport for his coffin to whichever African country his grandparents once came from. The family is organising a protest in front of the police station tomorrow. I say we should let Gramsci be and all go.”

Stunned silence greeted him. Grantaire forged on, feeling drunk for all that he was actually quite sober: “ _Putain_ , I know this group is mainly for discourse. But what the fuck do all those texts mean anyway, if we don’t go out and fucking – do something!”

Finally, he let his eyes drift over to Enjolras. His face was closed off, seemingly deep in thought, eyes fixed at a far point in the room. Something bitter rose inside Grantaire’s throat and to his horror he could feel tears burning his eyes. Abruptly, he turned and headed out again, heart thundering.

Like a dog he yearned for Enjolras’ approval, so much so that his indifference hurt worse than anyone else voicing their doubt out loud.

“ _Putain, putain, putain_ ,” he whispered to himself. He should’ve been smarter, and stayed away, like Eponine. But when had he ever been the smart one? He suddenly missed her terribly, her caustic comments, the blatant dislike she directed at Enjolras on behalf of him, loyal to a fault.

“Grantaire?”

It was Courfeyrac, carrying a glass of beer. He threw a long arm around Grantaire, tugging him in with ease. “I never knew you had it in you, an activist after all.”

“Enjolras didn’t seem like –“

“You need to stop talking about Enjolras for a second. We all agreed we would come, alright? You just caught us unawares, is all. We’re with you.” Courfeyrac was smiling down at him, and fuck, it felt good to hear him say it. Grantaire held his stare for a moment, then he leaned up and pressed a kiss to the corner of his upturned mouth.

“I see, I’m liking your reward system,” Courfeyrac said, a rumble entering his voice, smile broadening into a wicked grin. “How about this – I’ve already texted my lawyer friend who’s dating a journalist at _Le Monde_. They’ll be there also.”

Grantaire let out a choked-off laugh before they were already properly kissing. “You’re the lawyer friend in our group, you and Bahorel,” he said nonsensically, a sudden dizziness making him lean against Courfeyrac’s chest, hard with muscles under his touch. “Fuck, I really need to sleep. Give me a sip of that.” He downed the offered beer in one go, smacking his lips.

“Shall I take you home, then?”

“There won’t be much going on in bed, I’m afraid. I’m knackered. Haven’t slept for… don’t know how long.”

“And yet you’re here, reading Gramsci with us?” Courfeyrac shook his head, hand settling smoothly on Grantaire’s waist. “Boy, I’ve got to tell Enjolras, he’s got you pegged all wrong.”

“No need, I already heard.”

Enjolras had stepped outside with Combeferre. The three of them towered over Grantaire, who swayed some more, the sudden influx of alcohol making him light-headed. To think of it, he hadn’t eaten today, either. “What a fucking mess this is,” he said out loud, eyes tacking onto Enjolras’ face like the addict that he was. “I really need to be going, I’ll fall over if we stand around any longer.”

“When was the last time you slept, Grantaire?” Combeferre was going into doctor-mode, face serious. 

“I used up all my speed, and I’m too broke for cocaine, so I’ll have to be very frank with you: I don’t know, and I don’t care as long as I can sleep somewhere, and bloody soon. Can’t be setting police cars on fire with me half dead, right?”

“For fuck’s sake,” Enjolras said, eyes wide and incredulous. “You take drugs to avoid sleep? Have you got some kind of death wish?” Combeferre turned towards him, eyebrows raising, looking very much like he wanted to give some input of his own on Enjolras’ sleeping habits. 

“Yes, certainly, a part of me has a rather urgent death wish,” Grantaire shot back, defences up within a heartbeat. “What, do you just overdose on caffeine, Apollo? That stopped working for me ages ago.”

“The doctor says you need to sleep,” Courfeyrac was coaxing him along now, voice gentle. “We can fuck in the morning, there’s no haste.”

Grantaire gave Enjolras a last look. Like clockwork, painful longing badgered his insides at the sight of him. He was tired, physically, but also tired in a more general sense; being hopelessly in love was fucking exhausting. And Courfeyrac was right there, handsome and wholesome and very interested. Why would he turn him down?

“We can also fuck now,” Grantaire finally said, bold as anything. He turned away, taking deep breaths, heart still raging against his ribcage. “See you tomorrow then, at the rally!”

They spent the entirety of the _métro_ ride sucking on each other’s tongues. Once Grantaire’s apartment was reached, Courfeyrac undressed him and took him apart methodically, sucking his cock while opening him up. By the time they had gotten to their respective climaxes, Grantaire felt ready to pass out, and promptly did just that. Twelve hours of sleep later he invited Courfeyrac into his tiny shower, where they went for round two up against the tiles.

“You’re brilliant, R, really you are,” Courfeyrac babbled while Grantaire blinked up at him, lips stretched around the girth of his cock. Everything was still pleasantly hazy from sleep, and the steady rhythm of Courfeyrac fucking his throat had some comforting quality to it. He’d also never met an Alpha so free with his compliments. “Let me spend your next heat with you, I know you’ll be really fucking hot all slick and begging.”

Grantaire pulled off with a lewd pop, grinning: “I don’t beg. You better remember that.”

“Yes, whatever you want. I’ll do the begging, then. Come up here, please?” He tugged Grantaire up, turning him to face the shower wall. He was still open from their last time, and wet with arousal. Courfeyrac fucked back inside, sharp, jerky movements that sent breathless little sounds tumbling from Grantaire’s lips. They didn’t bother to properly dry off and went for a lazy third round in bed, draped over each other, hips moving in languid rolls.

Grantaire was sticky all over despite the shower, his insides aching pleasantly. He lit up a joint to complement the afterglow. Courfeyrac had his eyes closed, half his face bathed in the sunlight of midday. Grantaire stared at him, the aquiline slope of his nose, the stubble on his neck, and the words broke out of him in a barrage. “Do you know Aulnay-sous-Bois, Courfeyrac? It’s one of the _banlieues_. It’s… you know, chock full of ugly modernist housing complexes, those built in the 60s. Some journalists call it the _Other Paris_.”

Courfeyrac had opened his eyes, looking at him with growing concern. How desperately Grantaire wished that he was talking to Enjolras, in that moment. It was only fitting that he had to bare his soul to a replacement, but he forged on, wanting to get it all out, like a purging of internalised shame. “I grew up there, my grandmother raised me. And it is like another world to me, Aulnay. Another Paris, I mean. My father’s French, at least that’s what it says on my birth certificate. But mostly it was just me, my _jeda_ and my cousins.”

“You never said,” Courfeyrac murmured, eyes stunned wide open. “It wouldn’t have been important, you know. To any of us.”

“But that’s a lie!” Grantaire sat up, agitated. Courfeyrac plucked the cold joint from his fingers and deposited it on a pile of books. He then pulled Grantaire down and kissed him, licking along the seams of his mouth until he opened up with a moan. “Hmmpff – Courfeyrac, it’s a lie. Don’t pretend that it wouldn’t have mattered…”

But Courfeyrac was already silencing him with more kisses, hand roaming to find his hole, fucked out and swollen. Grantaire obliged him, and realized with an acrid jolt that his grand confession had fallen flat. Courfeyrac, as pleasant and charming as he was, held no deeper interest in his person, or the things that troubled him. Not in the ways that mattered, at least.

“Grantaire, come on now. It’s no big deal, there’s loads of things we haven’t told each other. And I truly don’t give a damn where any of your ancestors are from.” Courfeyrac fucked him gently with three fingers, hushing him when he whined in a weak protest. Grantaire writhed in his arms, torn between enjoying the slick pressure and the clamouring need to laugh out loud at himself.

How could he expect Courfeyrac to properly understand something he himself had barely grasped? The cold lump that lodged in his throat whenever he thought about Adama killed in police custody, of all the people he’d grown up with and loved so dearly. Everything he’d left behind, all the wrongs he’d been wilfully blind towards, just to fit in at all costs.

There was some more heavy kissing, with Grantaire spreading wide to fit Courfeyrac into the V of his legs. The pleasure of sex mixed strangely with the throbbing ache inside his chest. Some tears escaped him, but he held back the rest.

*

SCENE: In front of the _Commissariat de Police_ in Beaumont-sur-Oise, a squat building hidden behind a tall metal fence. Cars enter through the gate occasionally, pedestrians pass by with bags of groceries.

TIME: Sunday at noon. The church bells have only just struck for mass.

[ _Squatting in front of the gate and smoking a cigarette_ , BOUBACAR _types out messages on his phone and shakes his head in irritation._ ]

BOUBACAR:

You know what I really can’t stand about France? The hypocrisy. Oh, the land of the great revolutions, the land of a people unbowed, unbroken! _C’est des conneries!_ Look at me. Look at the colour of my skin. Am I French? Not really, right? What must I do to become French? Learn all the words of the fucking Marseillaise?

[ _Standing up straight,_ BOUBCARA _starts bellowing out the Marseillaise, drawing irritated looks from passers-by._ ]

BOUBACAR:

_Allons enfants de la Patrie_

_Le jour de gloire est arrive_

_Contre nous de la tyrannie_

_L’étendard sanglant est levé_

[ _He pauses to take a drag of his cigarette._ ]

BOUBACAR:

Let me tell you something: no riot would be forceful enough to show the wounds that have been wrought on us. You think the police is your friend and helper? They’re the ones that arrest us for nothing, terrorize us and kill us. You disagree? Well, let’s have a look at Adama Traoré, a dear friend and an upstanding man. They arrested him, took him in, no word, nothing. By nightfall his mother and brother were standing outside this gate. This gate right here!

[BOUBACAR _points at the steel gate of the_ Commissariat de Police.]

BOUBACAR:

She had brought him sandwiches, and she was crying. Then they came out and said: Madame, your son is dead. Dead! He’s had a heart attack. He was smoking weed. Doing drugs. We can’t let you see him, Madame. Yacouba, his older brother, they restrained him in his grief. Then they said – listen to this: Madame, we know you’re muslim, we’ve already phoned Air France, we can repatriate his remains to Mali immediately.

[BOUBACAR _wipes away a few stray tears, dropping and stepping on the butt of his cigarette. People keep passing him by as he stares into the distance._ ]

BOUBACAR:

 _Vive la France! Vive la France!_ Long live this nation of equality and justice!

[ _Letting out a disgusted snort, he_ _turns and walks away._ ]

*

Enjolras met his match at a park. Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, to be precise.

He would deny it vehemently when addressed directly, but nineteen-year-old Grantaire, with his guitar and his mocking lyrics, was some sort of a revelation, a different species altogether, though not in a positive sense. At the very least, he was one of the few people who were not instantly cowed by him, which, in retrospective, he begrudgingly mustered some respect for.

Enjolras at nineteen, in addition to his growing friends circle and a general lack of interest in screwing, still retained the casual cruelty of youth. It was the year he broke off all contact to his parents and was subsequently cut off from the generous fund they’d provided him. “Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit”, his pretentious father wrote him in an e-mail detailing the fiscal punishment.

As fate would have it, within three days of this debacle Enjolras’ _grand-tante_ Albertine died, and, not having any children of her own, left him her entire estate. By Christmas time, Enjolras’ mother was already leaving him teary voice messages, hoping for a reconciliation. But her leverage was gone, and as before mentioned, nineteen-year-old Enjolras was very much capable of cruelness.

This also applied to Grantaire, who had appeared at their reading circle smelling heavily of marijuana and sat in a corner looking amused. They had a screaming row over the role of the state and the necessity of a revolutionary vanguard. Grantaire did not possess the courtesy of letting him finish speaking, he laughed aloud when he found something ridiculous and he did it all right in Enjolras’ face.

These first impressions laid a very dubious foundation for the coming years. Enjolras treated his friends and comrades with respect, his closest companions he treated with warmth. By nature, and upbringing, he wasn’t a person to trust easily. He could be charming when the occasion called for it, but he could also be, frankly speaking, terrible.

Grantaire, who seemed to be his polar opposite in many aspects of life, was often target of this scorn. The fact that he was an Omega didn’t help one bit, it only served to strengthen Enjolras’ resolution in disliking him. He would sooner chew off his own foot than offer the paternalistic courtesy afforded to Omegas traditionally, or the sick fascination reserved for rare male ones.

He, as most leftists did, believed zealously that humans should never be slaves to biology, that reproductive systems and genitalia were only bits of flesh that should have no impact on a person. This belief translated into a steadfast coldness towards Grantaire, even more so when he happened to smell of thyme and honeyed bread, of winter spice and smoke.

Looking back, Enjolras would develop the good humour to laugh at his younger self. But at nineteen going on twenty, he thoroughly failed to recognize the difference gender and designation made in a person’s life. As a matter of fact, he didn’t at all realize that Grantaire was the only Omega in their group to begin with, and that most of his friends were male Alphas.

The implication of all these things sailed past his head, which for the time being remained locked in perpetual tunnel vision.

*

SCENE: In the parking lot of a rural Carrefour, somewhere near Marseille. Neon signs blink against the descending darkness, and some paces away a couple is holding a screaming match in a foreign language.

TIME: Nearing eleven o’clock in August, with all sense of time forgotten and the count of weekdays abandoned.

[ _Leaning against the headrest,_ COMBEFERRE _has one leg dangling out the wide-open car door. He is dressed in shorts, and sweat beads on his brow._ ]

COMBEFERRE:

This scene here, it’s a memory of mine. A rather pleasant one, too. We drove two borrowed cars and Bahorel’s van all the way to Barcelona. I’m sure you’ll hear of it in more detail, but I just thought you might appreciate the view.

[ _Gesturing at the glowing Carrefour sign,_ COMBEFERRE _tugs a corner of his mouth into a half-smile._ ]

COMBEFERRE:

They’re all in there, buying gallons of wine and packaged bread, no doubt. _Alors_ , you’ll ask me: why here, why this scene? Well, this was the summer Enjolras fell in love. Or maybe it’s a bit too trite to call it that, and I’m sure the process lasted far longer than just a few months. But it was on this trip that I became aware of it. He’s awfully good at hiding his emotions, and very apt at creating diversions by showing the more obvious things.

You have to know: He isn’t someone who loves easily. He also isn’t someone to let things pass by, and be content with what he had. Courfeyrac, his thing with Grantaire didn’t last any longer than half a year or so, on again, off again. Round and round they turned. The two of them, they both take sex as comfort, and as a hobby of sorts, they fuck to let off steam and to amuse themselves. For them, jealousy is a fleeting thing and people come and go as they please.

I know Enjolras very well. Do I sound arrogant? _Peut-être_. But I do know him well, better than he knows himself, at times. And he isn’t one who takes injuries lightly. He doesn’t deal well with pressure. That would surprise you, I suppose – Enjolras seems more resilient than any of us. But he turns it inwards, on himself, and it doesn’t show on the surface.

Grantaire and his lovers, the casual sex, that is something he never understood, emotionally. The concept of free love, yes, _bien sur_. The rejection of the heteronormative family, of quasi-religious life-long commitment, all of that he understood very well. But I’m sure that he did not comprehend it in a way to make peace with it, for the sake of himself.

[COMBEFERRE _takes out a rattling tin box the size of his palm and some long papers. With deft movements he starts rolling up, tucking the joint behind his ear to search for a lighter in the cluttered, old car. White smoke fills the air. A clamouring group approaches, carrying cartons of wine and bulging bags._ ENJOLRAS _is speaking with_ FEUILLY _and_ BOSSUET _, while_ GRANTAIRE _lags behind with a wine bottle already open._ ]

COMBEFERRE:

Alright, then. Farewell. We must be on our way again.

[COMBEFERRE _waves, exhaling a cloud of smoke, eyes half-lidded._ ]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The case of Adama Traoré is a real one. You can read up on it [here](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/17/adama-traore-death-in-police-custody-casts-long-shadow-over-french-society).
> 
> I also neglected to mention the situationist slogan that inspired my work title: "Sous les pavés, la plage" - it quite literally translates into "Under the pavement, the beach". It was a cry for change (or a cry for people to _imagine_ the change) of the French 1968 movement. [This article](https://medium.com/@joelmills66/sous-les-pav%C3%A9s-la-plage-1968-and-the-revolution-that-never-was-d811eb88882e) expands on it.


	3. Tethers to the planet, or: Spending Heat

(Early Summer 2016)

The council meeting was coming to a close.

Enjolras leaned back a few centimetres, exchanging a quick look with Combeferre at the other end of the row. He received a curt nod, and turned towards his left, where Feuilly was readying his phone, clearly fighting to keep his face unconcerned. Enjolras stood up slowly, straightening out his spine, eyes now solely focussed on the blonde woman seated at the front of the room.

“ _Madame le maire_ Natalie Groux!” He called out, raising his voice until he felt the room’s attention prickle on the back of his neck. “I have a question for you. As a concerned citizen of Beaumont-sur-Oise, it has come to my attention that you shared something on Facebook this past Sunday.”

Some people were grumbling at his interruption, an elderly council member letting out an exasperated sigh while the security personnel at the door squared their shoulders in agitation. Jehan, seated in the far back, took his cue flawlessly, calling out with a voice full of faux innocence: “What was the post about, Monsieur?”

Enjolras cleared his throat for the effect, vicious satisfaction rising inside his chest: “Let me read it for you all: _Que les citoyens de souche s'arment, et viennent en aides aux policiers sans recours!_ Native citizens, arm yourself and help the police!” Feuilly was now filming him from the side, stabilising the phone with both hands.

“Monsieur, the meeting is finished – Monsieur, please stop filming, Madame Groux will take no questions –“

Some harried assistant was shuffling over, but Enjolras didn’t deign to even look at her. Courfeyrac was standing now, presenting his grandest smile while he surveyed the room: “Ah, but am I understanding this correctly? _Madame le maire_ posted this on Sunday, right after a terrible crime had shaken Beaumont-sur-Oise? Right after a fellow citizen was murdered?”

“You are correct!” Enjolras bellowed. From the corner of his eye, he could see the two security men approaching, though their strategy of spreading out throughout the room was working: they evidently did not know whom to subdue first. The hall was filled with murmurs now, some people shaking their heads vehemently. He forged on, staring the mayor down: “ _Madame le maire!_ When you asked _native_ citizens to arm themselves, who exactly were you addressing? Who is a native here in France?”

“I’m not obliged to answer your questions.“ Groux was flushed red with anger, making to stand, face an indignant mask. Enjolras barely suppressed the urge to tackle her and force his opinions down her throat. Anger was pulsing through him in a low hum, but he disregarded it, focussing on the plan.

“And why would we help the police? Was it not the police who murdered Adama Traoré? What am I not understanding here?” Courfeyrac interrupted her, putting on a comical face of befuddlement. Truly, he had a talent for theatrical public displays. “But Madame, I’m getting the impression that you’re quite the racist!”

“I will not be talked to in this way!” Natalie Groux was now fuming, walking towards the door. The security personnel had finally made up their mind, one of them going for Courfeyrac, who was nearest, the other turning towards Enjolras. Outside the council hall, shouts and angry chants echoed, followed by the distinctive, sharp hiss of tear gas. The police forces that had denied most people entrance to the council meeting was now dispersing the angry crowd.

Time to get moving, then.

“You incite nothing but hate! You should be ashamed of yourself!” Enjolras screamed over the ruckus before dodging left, narrowly evading the heavy, grasping arm of the security man. Chairs toppled over while he kept up the yelling: “ _Raciste! Dégage!_ ”

The rest of _Les Amis_ took up the chant, and the room erupted in a clamour. Marius, who had seated himself at the very front, stood up and planted himself in the mayor’s line of sight: “Shame on you, Madame, how you can post such racist filth and still sleep at night!” He sounded achingly earnest in his anger, and Natalie Groux, flanked by her assistants, faltered for a moment.

Combeferre, meanwhile, was busy extracting an enraged Courfeyrac from security, voice calm: “Monsieur, it is our right to speak our mind. You have no grounds to stand on when you remove him, or any of us.”

“ _Raciste!_ Step back from your office, nobody here wants you!” Joly and Bossuet, who had strategically placed themselves near the exit, let loose an angry barrage while the mayor ducked outside, shielding her face. Feuilly sprinted after her with his phone raised, only to be jostled back by one of the security gooneys. “ _Justice pour Adama! Justice pour Adama!_ ”

“Careful now,” Enjolras dashed through the room to follow after the harassed mayor, looking out the grand windows of the entrance hall. Outside, some forty heavily armed policemen were busy shoving back the enraged crowd. Night had already fallen, and it was difficult to make out the goings-on. Feuilly tucked away his phone and joined him, face full of concern: “ _Putain_ , do you think it’ll work?”

“Yes, it will,” Enjolras told him with conviction. Their plan had been remarkably smooth-running: the early arrival, the three hours of council meetings they’d sat through in silence and now the semi-choreographed confrontation with Groux.

“How the fuck will we get out now, with half the platoon guarding this building?” Courfeyrac was swearing under his breath, T-shirt torn askew from his scuffle with security.

“We wait,” Combeferre answered, joining the rest of _Les Amis_ at the windows, staring outside with his eyes squinted. “Ah. There we go.”

“Fuck, yes!” Someone said under their breath, but Enjolras was too busy gazing up at the building across the street. Slowly, a large banner unrolled itself from the rooftop, dropping down with a swish. He could make out the shadow of someone moving, and briefly caught sight of a hooded figure he knew to be Grantaire. The protesting crowd outside turned and gaped for a short moment. Then everyone broke out into deafening cheers.

“JUSTICE ET VERITÉ POUR ADAMA TRAORÉ”.

Grantaire had painted the letters in a bold, accusing font, red and black onto the backdrop of a torn French flag, singed and sullied. Enjolras watched, briefly enraptured. Then two flashlights went on, illuminating the banner from below, casting the words in a dramatic light.

“That’s Bahorel,” Courfeyrac exclaimed, face glowing. “Feuilly, Feuilly! Get it recorded, are you filming, man?”

“If this doesn’t make the papers, I don’t know what will,” Bossuet said darkly, also busy snapping pictures with his phone. “We’ll flood social media with it, anyhow.”

“Grantaire sure knows how to orchestrate a proper spectacle!” Jehan’s face was split wide in a grin. “Fuck, now he’ll have to run, and fast. That’s breaking and entering they could charge him with.”

Enjolras’ heartbeat picked up, eyes scanning through the crowd outside. The police was pushing back again, reacting to furious taunts from teenagers who had covered their faces with t-shirts. Within seconds batons were raised, tension erupting into violence that quickly transitioned into a one-sided clubbing. In the tumultuous back and forth, the entrance was finally cleared. Enjolras didn’t waste a second: “ _Allez, allez,_ let’s go!” 

They dashed out, one after another, straight into the frenzy of it, joining the confused jumble of protestors. The biting smell of tear gas assaulted Enjolras’ senses. He tugged up the hem of his shirt, shielding mouth and nose, eyes watering while keeping to the side-lines and scanning the crowd. Everyone had their tasks: Feuilly and Bossuet would keep filming from different vantage points; Jehan and Marius were checking back with Grantaire. Courfeyrac was chaperoning the journalist from _Le Monde_ he’d invited. Joly had put on his neon medic vest, already busy washing tear gas out of reddened eyes with saline solution.

Enjolras was on observation duty with Combeferre. Most of Adama Traoré’s family and friends had come, elderly people and young children alike. The bulk of the crowd, however, was made up of young men, brown faces distorted with fury. He jogged closer when another commotion broke out, trying his damnest to keep from storming the line of police in their riot gear. A woman was crying, big heaving sobs that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. “What’s happened?” somebody yelled.

Combeferre appeared at his side, glasses sliding off his long nose. He was wearing an ill-boding expression, tight-lipped and grim. “The police arrested Adama’s brother. They’re organising for lawyers to come. Courfeyrac has already offered to help.” 

“The time?”

“Half-past eight,” Combeferre started typing on his phone again. “I’ve just texted everyone. We’ll postpone the meeting.”

“Of course. We can’t leave as long as the situation stays so dire.” Enjolras crossed his arms, back tensing to the point of discomfort. He itched for something to do. Yet this protest was organized by the Traorés, and while they’d done their part inside the council building, it was not their struggle to stand front and centre.

It was another hour until people finally started leaving. The night air was charged, the sky above them the purple of a darkening bruise. A constant swell of mutters rose and fell amongst the crowd, occasionally interrupted by an outright rant.

Adama’s brother was still in police custody, a terrifying parallel to the previous week. Repeatedly Enjolras heard people expressing their fear for his life, and his sanity. The solid stench of dread hung over everything. It lingered even as the protestors finally dispersed.

By the time he and Combeferre arrived at their flat in Goutte d’Or, it was nearing midnight.

*

When speaking about Grantaire’s drug habits, only one word was needed for an appropriate summary: “Yes.”

He said yes to it all, from the moment the option of an affirmative was offered. He agreed to share Boubacar’s joints, he nodded when friends offered him the vodka bottle, he mimed exaggerated thumbs-up when presented with coke. There was something inside him that over-indulged to the point of obsession. Should it be sex, food, boxing or beer, he had a tendency to gorge himself until the inevitable breakdown occurred.

The dark periods were recurrent, with pleasant, normal days sandwiched in between. Grantaire had his first long-term relationship during his second year in art school. The girl was a Beta, an aspiring sculptor and an avid raver. For two months, they spent every single weekend doped up to their eyeballs on ecstasy. Once, they took a fourteen-hour bus all the way to Berlin, spending an entire week snorting speed inside darkened techno clubs.

Predictably, he crashed, failed to get out of bed for a while and broke up with her by being resolutely incommunicado. The usage of party drugs he inherited from her, though a by far more mellowed version. 

A year later, he said yes to heroin on a rainy summer afternoon, hanging around with some Dutch kids he’d met in a bar. He was offered a brand-new needle, friendly claps on his back and in one case, a filthy kiss full of tongue. Eponine found out, one way or another, and slapped him in front all of _Les Amis_ before making him promise on the pain of death and friendship that he would _never_ do it again.

That, at least, was a promise he somehow kept.

He couldn’t have told anyone what the rush had felt like, the bright sparks and the hollow dread, the way he thought the skin might slough off his flesh or how he’d grown hard and wet while writhing on the carpet. All in all, he was exceedingly lucky to have Eponine and her vicious slaps around, because he’d for sure have gone back and done it again, and again, and again.

All through this, weed and alcohol were his constant companions, the former more so than the latter. Surprisingly, being sober was a feat he often accomplished for extended periods of time, the longest being eleven months and twenty days. He compensated by smoking, or using his pipe, or his bong, or his vaporizer.

The times he did say yes to alcohol, it was with disastrous intent.

Oxytocin, too, was something he craved and indulged in by keeping himself as open to other people’s interest as possible. Sex, he figured early on, was the least destructive of all his addictions. If anything, it fostered easy friendships with like-minded people. Sex was the first thing he sought out whenever he couldn’t look at himself in the mirror or felt the first traces of panic over his own detachment.

His humiliating infatuation with Enjolras changed and morphed over the years, and at times he felt unsure whether there was an addiction to pain somewhere inside his fucked-up head. The manner in which he cherished every verbal barb, every unkind look sent his way were only minor tip-offs. What truly outed Grantaire as an utter masochist was the conviction with which he loved, and the firm, almost proud belief that he was incapable of ever stopping.

*

Courfeyrac had a disgusting bounce in his step.

Enjolras tracked him at the periphery of his vision, the way he flitted in and out of his room, grabbing a toothbrush here, stuffing a stray sock into his gym bag there, whistling all the while. He slouched a little in his seat, sighing in irritation. Feuilly, who had been hunched over the camera for an eternity, shot upright to correct his posture for the umpteenth time: “More to the left – to the left, yes. Now sit up straighter.”

“To the left, to the left,” Courfeyrac warbled in falsetto, putting his obnoxious cap on backwards. His grin was absolutely radiant and completely infuriating. “Alright, comrades, I’m off. Have fun with the vlog!”

“Where are you off to, though?” Bossuet appeared from behind his laptop, casting the brilliant blue sky outside the closed windows a wistful look. “A date at Buttes-Chaumont?”

“Ah, no. You see…” Enjolras couldn’t suppress the eye-roll while Courfeyrac waggled his brows suggestively. “Grantaire’s in need of me. It’s the heat.” He chuckled at his own double-entendre. “I simply must go, _mes amis_.”

“You’re actually spending heat with him?” Joly sat up from his position on the couch, bundled up in long-sleeves despite the glaring sun. “Do you have all the supplies? Water? Lube? You know nutrition and hydration are vital during Omega heats, it’s 38 degrees outside, and –“

“I’ve got it all covered,” Courfeyrac waved him off with a lazy gesture bordering on arrogant, heading out the door with a jangle of keys. “ _Á la prochaine_!”

“He’s awfully smug these days,” Bossuet murmured, disappearing behind the laptop again, headphones on. “Let’s try it with the sound once more, alright?”

Feuilly nodded, Joly gave a thumbs up and Enjolras refocused, staring straight ahead into the camera lens. He’d read through the speech a dozen times already and practiced throughout the first three takes. If anything came to him naturally at all, it was speaking. He tossed the pages aside, tugged briefly at the sweat-soaked collar of his T-Shirt (“Justice Pour Adama” it proclaimed in bold white letters on black cotton) and sat up straight.

The words simply came. They rushed out of him, taking shape and weight before his eyes, filling the room while his voice took on a life of its own, leapt and rolled. He gestured with his hands just to trace the glimmering paths they left. The camera ceased to be. Feuilly, crouched behind it with only his conspicuous red mop of hair visible, also ceased to be.

Seven minutes later their little amateur shoot was wrapped.

“Aw, man. I don’t know how you do it,” Feuilly said while thumping him soundly on the back. “You take one look at that paper, and _boom!_ I swear to God.”

“Now we’ve only got to wait till Grantaire’s done with his heat to start editing,” Bossuet wiped the sweat from his bald patch, reaching for the empty water bottle. “Can we go out now, guys? I’m suffocating in here.”

They went out and passed the day wandering around. The parks were all overcrowded with tourists and annoyed Parisians attempting to sunbathe. Gangs of topless teenagers blasted music while jammed cars blared their horns in the afternoon traffic.

Enjolras walked along, squinting into the sun, idle for the first time since the semester ended. He had finished his exams, typed up his papers in a frenzy of 48 hours and interviewed for a part-time job at a leftist publisher. He’d also written two articles on the history of the _banlieues_ and police brutality for L’Humanité, tidied his room, the kitchen and the bathroom. Lastly, the speech for Feuilly’s video project had kept him up well into the small hours of the morning.

But that, too, was now done.

They ended up sitting outside a café, holding onto sweating cans of beer, chatting about everything and nothing. It was a strange state to be in, Enjolras mused privately. Meandering along without any particular purpose, sitting in the shade while the Parisian concrete sweltered around them.

“Grantaire’s been really different these past weeks,” Feuilly flicked his lighter and lit up a smoke. Enjolras glanced up at his statement, eyebrows raising. Feuilly gave him a pointed look over the rim of his sunglasses, freckled nose scrunching in amusement: “ _Quoi?_ Don’t you think so? R has never been particularly engaged, right? He comes, he drinks, he argues. But that is it. Now, where do I start? He’s not only initiated the whole Adama Traoré thing, from the very beginning. He spent three nights in a row designing the banner and planning the drop...”

“That was so brilliant,” Joly injected, slurping the last dregs from his beer can before tugging out his customary bag of wet wipes. “Honestly, him and Bahorel were fucking amazing.”

“I suppose,” Enjolras shrugged, feeling oddly scrutinized.

“And now he’s offered to do the video editing with me!” Bossuet was sweating straight through his T-shirt, dark patches forming at the pits of his arms. He leaned in close to peer at Enjolras’ face: “You have to cut R some slack, you’re so severe with him.”

“I never said anything!” Enjolras took a swig from his lukewarm lager. He knew he was being defensive. Nonsensically, his mind kept supplying him with irritating images of Grantaire and Courfeyrac, cozied up together, giggling at something trivial. “Of course, it’s good that he wants to contribute…”

Feuilly chucked. “You should’ve seen your reaction to Courfeyrac earlier!”

Joly, adept at playing peacemaker, steered their conversation towards safer topics. They talked about the recent riots in Beaumont-sur-Oise and a subtle change in police strategies. Feuilly, ever the insurrectionist, saw great potential in the outbursts of violence, while Bossuet fretted over the public image of the anti-racist movement. Enjolras enjoyed himself, truly he did. There was scarcely a better activity he could think up than talking politics with his friends.

They moved only to get falafel once hunger struck. The orange sun had already sunken past the rooftops when he thought to check his phone for the first time in many hours. Combeferre, on holiday in the alps with his family, had sent pictures of insects and marmots as per usual. He was more surprised to find that he had two missed calls from someone he’d saved under ‘Musichetta Toulouse’.

“Enjolras, _allô_!” She greeted him like an old friend, voice raised against the din of traffic. “I saw you walk past me an hour ago, or so I thought – I was merely trying to verify by calling you.”

“ _Salut!_ Are you still around Quartier Latin?”

“Why, yes, I’ve moved here, as a matter of fact! Just yesterday, can you believe it?”

“You should join me, I’m out with some friends. We’re having dinner –“

“Yes, I think I will! Stay put, I’ll come find you!”

It turned into a pleasant surprise. Enjolras and Feuilly recounted their night out at Grantaire’s boxing match, meeting the group from Toulouse on the _métro_ and making plans for Barcelona. Musichetta was just as spirited as he recalled. She slotted herself neatly into their little group, joking along, making conversation about humorous little anecdotes. She was starting her doctorate degree in modern history and had just returned from Detroit, where she’d spent the better part of the year researching the Dodge revolutionary union movement.

“I’m just a law student,” Bossuet answered when she turned to him with interest, thoroughly flustered at the attention. “And I just do medicine,” Joly replied in similar fashion, staring at her with his mouth half-open.

Dusk turned into evening and Feuilly bid them goodbye to meet some other friends for the cinema (“It’s a six hour Agnieszka Holland retrospective!”). Bossuet and Joly left together, though they both got Musichetta’s number and promised to keep in touch. Enjolras didn’t feel particularly tired, so he kept on talking to her about the African-American labour movement in Detroit while strolling along the Seine. He’d read a great deal on Fordism and was eager for her input.

“It was such good fortune that I saw you on the street today! I was already making my inner peace with a lonesome summer after moving here, _et_ _voilá!_ I’ve got three new contacts.” Musichetta was smiling up at him, dimples showing. He suddenly realized how close they were standing.

“Well, you’re welcome to join us any time, during the semester we’ve weekly meetings.”

“ _Les Amis_ , you mean? Oh, I’d love to come.” Enjolras glanced down. The tips of Musichetta’s sandals and his own sneakers were touching. Her scent was floral, warm and mellow, and with a jolt he remembered that she was Omega. “ _Écoute_ , Enjolras, I like being straight-forward about things, but I don’t know you very well yet. I’ve taken the week to come off my suppressants, and, well…”

Enjolras frowned at her for a while, processing. “You want to spend your heat with me,” he finally said. He had aimed for a questioning lilt, but his voice came out flat.

Musichetta, however, seemed unphased. “Well, I originally planned on doing it on my own, seeing as I don’t know anybody here yet. But I like you, you seem frank. And you’re very attractive,” she answered matter-of-factly. “I have to, either way. Doctor’s orders.”

Enjolras considered it briefly. His first instinct was to reject her. But then again, he had never been the type to run on instinct alone. Courfeyrac popped up again before his mind’s eye, eager and smug. This time, he had a hand fisted in Grantaire’s mop of curls, their heads leaning together in a clash of chestnut and inky black. They were talking about something with their mouths mere inches apart –

“Yes,” Enjolras told Musichetta. He took her hand for good measure, trying to convey his assent.

They walked to her place near Censier-Daubenton, a miniscule flat which barely fitted the rickety bed. The large suitcase blocking most of the leftover space was the only sign of life. Musichetta spread her arms wide, touching both sides of the wall: “I shared a small flat in Toulouse with Cecile and another friend. Well, small is relative, I suppose – it was a veritable palace compared to this.”

The topic turned to housing costs and rent speculation for a while. Musichetta undressed herself leisurely, dropping her blouse, her airy skirt, removing her bralette with a flick of her wrist before finally stepping out of her panties. She was very pretty, Enjolras noted absentmindedly while they stretched out on her new bed with him still completely clothed. Rosy and pale in some places, sun-reddened in others.

“We’ll have to trigger it. The heat, I mean,” she told him, turning onto her stomach unselfconsciously. “ _Putain_ , I haven’t had one in years.”

“I haven’t had sex since I was nineteen,” he shot back, feeling slightly out of place. Not quite nervous or self-conscious, just a little odd. “I didn’t quite see the point in it.”

“I should be flattered then, I suppose,” Musichetta’s full lips had gained an amused quirk. “So, you have no preferences? Nothing that’s off limits? Places I shouldn’t touch?”

Enjolras closed his eyes and attempted to focus on her questions.

What did and didn’t he like? Instead of finding something conductive to formulating an answer, his thoughts swivelled and took another route altogether. Like the reel of a movie, a scene played itself out before his eyes: Courfeyrac getting a beer from the bar, breezing outside. Grantaire, slumped against the wall after his eruption about Adama Traoré, cheek stained blue, curls wild. The way he’d turned up his face at Courfeyrac, surprised and glad and unexpectedly sweet.

Then, the dry press of lips. A chaste kiss, by any standards, but laden with meaning.

Enjolras had been told repeatedly that falling in love with Courfeyrac was frighteningly easy. He supposedly checked all the boxes when it came to dating and routinely reinforced the notion of his own Casanova-like qualities by picking up willing candidates left and right.

Combeferre had once put it this way, high on ketamine and brutal in his honesty: “It is a wonder Courfeyrac turned out such a leftist. He could easily give speeches at conservative forums or lead a horde of desperate incels in a dating workshop. He’d be swimming in euro bills.” 

None of those things were helpful for his current situation with Musichetta, though. He finally settled on: “We’ll just have to try everything once,” before stripping out of his T-shirt and discarding his jeans. The sudden burst of skin-on-skin contact made them both shiver. Musichetta was warm and smooth and soft beneath him, supple and yielding all at once. Her plait was coming undone, dissolving into a crown of dark curls.

Enjolras dipped his face down to kiss her, a tentative touch of lips. It felt strange to be so close to someone else, feel their breath and the fluttering of their pulse. He slipped off the last piece of clothing, his boxer shorts, and bit back a yelp when Musichetta reached out to hold his freed cock, tugging at it gently. He sank his hands into the mess of her hair, relishing the texture and feel of it.

Grantaire had tighter curls. Musichetta’s were wavier, softer, less scraggly.

“Condoms, come on,” Musichetta said, out of breath. She was rubbing at her clit, eyes half-lidded while bending over the side of the bed to get at her suitcase. He fumbled with the strip of packets, she tore open a square with her teeth, jerked him roughly before rolling the condom on. “Enjolras, is this alright?”

“Yes, it’s fine, it’s fine,” he assured her. Then she was sinking down, engulfing him with a few gyrating movements, hot and slick, almost too much to handle. He bucked up while Musichetta ground down, and just like that, they had a rhythm going.

Before his mind’s eye, he could see Courfeyrac grinning down at Grantaire, thumbing at the streak of blue paint on his cheekbone. They were kissing, properly making out now, arching up and bowing down to accommodate each other. Courfeyrac had a possessive hand on Grantaire’s waist, and it was slipping lower, cupping his arse with an authoritative ease, and Grantaire was moaning, his ears flushed, lips bitten, they were practically grinding now –

“Ah, _fuck_ ,” Musichetta mewled, head thrown back. She was shuddering with the first waves of orgasm, her inner walls tightening around him in pulses. Enjolras closed his eyes and fucked her through the crests and peaks of it, the warm caramel of her scent filling the room.

He somehow managed to stay hard and coax a second orgasm out of her. They collapsed in a sweaty heap, grinding against each other until Enjolras came. It accosted him out of the blue, sensations building up until his gut was a roil of nerve-endings, sparking and electrifying. It took him ages to calm down, twitching with zings of pleasure, the tips of his fingers gone numb and prickly. He stared up at the dark ceiling, eyes unwilling to focus. Musichetta clenched down on the knot forming at the base of his cock, coming a third time.

“Now we’ve definitely triggered it,” she said in between gasps, body lax on top of him, cheek pressed against the sweat-slick crook of his neck.

Enjolras didn’t answer. His nostrils, curiously, were filled with scents formerly absent, something vaguely spicy, citrusy, a tart sweetness barely there at all. He tried his best not to think of Courfeyrac and Grantaire, how they would look while in bed, kissing frantically, stripping and throwing clothing items every which way. Locked together, smiling and painfully in love.

“Tell me about _Les Amis_ , then,” Musichetta’s voice vibrated against his ribcage when she spoke again. “Joly, Bossuet, Feuilly – what are they like? And, what was his name again? The Omega who did the boxing?”

Enjolras swallowed. “You mean Grantaire.”

“He was very impressive. I’ve never seen anyone quite like him – I even spoke about him at my feminist book club back in Toulouse. The way he challenged the norm of scent blockers…”

It seemed that people were dead set on talking to him about Grantaire today. As if he didn’t notice these things, as if he was completely blind and deaf to Grantaire and his ways. Like he hadn’t spent the last four years consistently arguing with him, every week without fail. “That’s just how he is, I reckon.”

“Oh, but it takes courage to do what he does,” Musichetta pushed up to her elbows, stretching until their eyes met. “I sense that you’re in no mood to talk.”

“ _Desolé_ ,” Enjolras immediately said, feeling contrite. “I’m not used to this kind of proximity, is all. I wasn’t lying when I told you that I hadn’t slept with anyone in the last few years.” 

“Why ever that is remains a mystery to me,” Musichetta cupped his face gently, cheeks dimpling with a smile. “You’re a wonderful lover.” 

*

Jehan once went around and asked everyone what Grantaire’s best feature was.

An opponent had punched his nose crooked during a boxing match and his beloved trainer Farid had failed to set it quite right in the bloody aftermath. It retained the slightest tilt to the right, healing into a little knob that sat on the bridge of his nose. Grantaire, while outwardly uncaring, took down the mirror in his room and started brushing his teeth at the kitchen sink.

The irrational self-hatred was a thing he had acquired during his teenage years, and never quite managed to unlearn properly. The left-hook that left his formerly rather large but straight nose a warped mess only exacerbated this tendency.

Jehan, the sole Beta of the group, had by this time formed a genuine rapport with Grantaire, bonding over cheesy song lyrics, Russian literature and psychedelic drugs. He was a sensitive soul and observant to the degree of being creepy – naturally, Grantaire’s rather exaggerated misery over his nose didn’t escape his notice. Neither did the grotesque paintings he started doing, paired with a Max Ernst obsession and heightened interest in episcopal depictions of the devil.

Grantaire, while undeniably a drama queen, certainly wasn’t the epitome of traditional beauty. He’d known this from the moments of earliest childhood: his complexion was consistently praised, as well as the startling blue of his eyes. However, he knew he had a beak for a nose (a bitter inheritance from his absent _Maman_ ), an overbite (which never saw the wiring of braces due to lack of funds) and heavy brows (plucked into submission on a weekly basis). He was also a rather chubby teen, and prone to gaining weight during Ramadan.

His obsession with workout stemmed from the misdirected need of fitting into conventional standards of attractiveness. At times, he ate with the vigour of a true _gourmand_ , stuffing himself just for the taste of it. Then came periods that saw no food at all, or merely half-hearted attempts at filling a shrunken stomach.

The months following Grantaire’s nose-incident were more of the latter. Jehan, who had by now made Grantaire’s issues into his personal assignment, noticed his lack of appetite and the way he hid behind his fringe. He took the time to casually ask around, taking care to embed his questions into inane small talk. He jotted down the answers and proceeded to write a haiku, which he (in true Jehan-fashion) never finished.

The following are some legible responses he noted:

x Bahorel: “Grantaire is the goddamned best fist-fighter in all of Paris.”

x Eponine: “His tongue. Definitely his tongue.”

x ~~Combeferre: “No comment.”~~ (was sitting next to Enjolras, unwise move)

x Joly: “Grantaire is really, incredibly healthy, have you noticed? He barely gets ill at all! He can take a mix of ecstasy, speed and ketamine, never mind the alcohol, and still go boxing the next day!”

x Courfeyrac: “ _Putain_ , I’d say – well I’d say his whole body, then? He has a sexy way of moving, he’s a good mover. Is that a word? Well, you know what I mean.”

x Feuilly: “Well, what do you mean, best feature? Like, he has a nice smile, yeah?”

*

SCENE: In a little _crêperie_ in Le Marais, with dimmed lighting and the soft clink of cutlery.

TIME: On a Friday evening brimming with life, the taste of anticipation sweet on everyone’s tongue.

[COURFEYRAC _and_ COMBEFERRE _are sharing a crêpe with salted butter and chocolate spread, taking turns with their bites. They’re squeezed on a bench, comfortable with the proximity, talking in lowered voices_.]

COURFEYRAC:

Well, dear readers, listeners and watchers, are you tired of the nonsense yet? Tired of all the fucking mistakes we made along the way? Oi, Alexandre Cédric, that was a bloody large bite!

COMBEFERRE:

Order another one, then.

[COURFEYRAC _gestures for the_ WAITER _to come, free hand sliding off the table and casually coming to rest on_ COMBEFERRE’S _jeans-clad thigh_.]

COMBEFERRE:

Meanwhile, let me tell you something in all honesty: Musichetta entering the picture changed things. I’m still not overly familiar with her…

COURFEYRAC:

Chetta is the best, man. She’s the coolest, there literally isn’t a single thing that woman can’t do. And did you read her doctorate thesis on Detroit? _Merde_ , I thought Enjolras would come in his pants while going through it, that boy has a competency kink, I swear.

COMBEFERRE:

Well, she and Enjolras dated.

COURFEYRAC:

If you can even call it that!

COMBEFERRE:

They did, very briefly. She came to our meetings, Joly fell for her, Bossuet fell for her too. They couldn’t have been more similar in that regard. Don’t let their current polyamorous construct fool you – the beginnings were disastrous. Especially when it became clear that Enjolras held no real interest in her on the long term.

COURFEYRAC:

Oh yes. I think they actually bonded over it, didn’t they? Being best friends in love with the same Omega who was dating one of their friends. Well, not just any friend! The self-righteous, well-spoken, attractive blond friend. But when she became available and showed interest, _putain_ , that was when it all fell apart. 

[ _The_ WAITER _arrives with another chocolate crêpe_.]

COMBEFERRE:

 _Merci bien_. Here, eat your dessert, Courf. Of course, Enjolras barely registered these things. He worked sixty-hour weeks that winter, do you remember?

COURFEYRAC:

I’m still hung up on the summer. Thinking back… maybe I did realize that he started acting strange around Grantaire. The same way I’d always known that Grantaire was in love with him. But you know, I’m a selfish bastard, and I was basically drunk on R for those six months.

COMBEFERRE:

Anyone somewhat observant realized how Grantaire felt.

[COURFEYRAC _shrugs and downs his cidre. He then turns to face_ COMBEFERRE, _the tips of their noses mere inches apart._ ]

COURFEYRAC:

I’m not very observant, I can admit to that.

COMBEFERRE:

Of course you’re observant – when you choose to be, at least.

[ _They break apart again, and don’t speak for a while_. COURFEYRAC _eats his crêpe in silence, brows furrowed. Underneath the table, their knees are pressed together tightly_.]

*

“There is the distinct possibility that you’re angry with me.”

Enjolras picked up his pace, keeping his breathing pattern even. Courfeyrac caught up with him, prattling on despite the near sprint: “ _N’importe quoi!_ You don’t want to talk about it, it’s fine. You realize I’ll have to inform Combeferre, right? He’ll have to leave his alpine rodents be and return to Paris –“

Enjolras went a little faster, speeding past couples holding hands and school children looking at their smartphones. Buttes-Chaumont was filled to the brim, once again, with casually-dressed chic people trying their best to enjoy the evening sun. The sight of them annoyed him, though by far not as much as his running partner. “ – I mean, I love you, you’re my friend, then you disappear for a week and pretend nothing happened, am I not right to be worried?”

Letting up a little, Enjolras turned to stare at Courfeyrac. “You weren’t even home last week!”

“Oh yes, but I can multitask, and you certainly weren’t answering phone-calls. Feuilly tried to stop by at eleven at night and no-one was home…”

They both slowed into a jog, breathing heavily. Enjolras kept his eyes straight ahead, skirting around a woman, her toddler and two yappy chihuahuas. Truthfully, he wasn’t at all keen on exposing his whereabouts from the previous week. He had spent most of it fucking Musichetta through her medically necessary heat, holed up in her one-bedroom apartment talking about transatlantic unionism, emerging only to buy cheese and bread for sustenance.

It had been a strange state, hazy and dazed, with too much pleasure and too much body contact. He had felt a strange sense of shame after showering off the mixture of their combined scents, a disquiet that persistently continued to follow him.

“I met a friend,” he finally said, coming to a stand-still. They took turns emptying the single water bottle they’d brought. He might as well face the music now. Courfeyrac’s face was lighting up in a lopsided grin, and he slung a sweat-drenched arm around Enjolras’ shoulder: “Yes, carry on, I’m listening…”

“She needed some help,” he said slowly, screwing the bottle cap back on. “And I provided the aid she required.”

“ _Pas Possible!_ ” Courfeyrac’s exclamation swivelled quite a few heads in their vicinity, and his hold on Enjolras tightened as his eyes danced with mirth. “You spent heat with someone? You? Monsieur-Sex-Is-An-Unnecessary-Nuisance? Wow. Just – I’m so proud of you, Enjolras.”

He simply couldn’t suppress the eyeroll. “Yes, Courfeyrac.”

“I cannot even – what’s her name? You said _her_ , right? Come on now, tell me. I’ll tell you everything in return –“

“ _Merci, non_.” Enjolras hadn’t meant for it to come out quite as cold, but his stomach dropped at the mere thought of Courfeyrac recounting Grantaire’s heat. Buddying it up, like Alphas so often did amongst each other, talking about sex and body parts. It was disgustingly macho for all that Courfeyrac was as queer as they got. But above all, he simply refused to listen to anyone waxing poetic about Grantaire, details or no.

“Fine, fine, keep your secrets. Grantaire was great, actually – wait! _No way,_ speaking of the devil!”

Enjolras fell behind as he tracked Courfeyrac’s line of view, heartbeat picking up. His eyes captured none other than Grantaire sitting on the pitch, smoking his customary joint with a friend. Everything inside him clenched at the sight, and he felt a familiar annoyance creeping up along with an intolerable itch at the base of his spine. He gave himself a few moments before joining the group, taking deep breaths through his nose.

Just as he had finally steeled himself, a cheerful voice called out: “Enjolras!” It was Marius, tugging his girlfriend Cosette along and waving at him while removing a pair of aviators. They all went to sit with Grantaire in the dry grass, the joint made its round and cans of beer were cracked open.

Everyone greeted Grantaire’s friend, a jovial black man by the name of Boubacar. Cosette, especially, seemed to take an immediate interest in him: “May I ask where are you from? You see, I’ve been to Mali last year, and I’m looking to go back this autumn. You have the look of a Malian.”

Their little circle fell uncomfortably silent. Enjolras turned to stare at Cosette, a few choice words lodged in his throat, just to realize that she seemed painfully young. He had never quite paid attention to her the few times she’d joined them at the Musain. Across from him, Grantaire had gone stony-faced, eyes downcast in an uncharacteristic display of reticence.

“Well, you should be right, though I’ve never been to Mali,” Boubacar let out a forced chuckle, shrugging a few times. “I’ve never been to Africa altogether, to be honest.”

“Truly?” Cosette seemed honestly astonished. “It’s so beautiful there, the people are so _friendly_! They know so much about the earth, so many things we’ve forgotten here.”

“Well,” Boubacar said, looking helplessly to Grantaire, who was rubbing a hand down his face. Predictably, Courfeyrac chose this moment to speak up in an attempt at dissolving the tension: “I’ve never been, either! And I know next to nothing about the earth. Anyways, did you guys watch –“

“Cosette was in Mali with _Caritas_ , isn’t that right?” Marius was beaming at her like she’d hung the aggressively hot summer sun. “You were teaching French. And English!”

“Are you a teacher, then?” Enjolras found himself asking. A familiar fury was snaking itself up to the base of his skull, pooling there and crystallizing into a barrage of sharpened words. “And isn’t the official language of Mali French? Why would they need you to teach them French? Do you speak Bambara? Are you at all qualified to work with children?”

Cosette was flushing, eyes going glassy with unshed tears. The sight of her quivering full lip only served to make Enjolras more aggressive. He made to speak again but was interrupted by a hand on his shoulder. It was a girl, red-faced and wide-eyed, clad in a bikini top. “Yes?” He asked, impatient.

She smiled at him, leaning in close with a waft of sunscreen and perfume. “ _Salut_! I just saw you running, and I was wondering whether you’d like to join me and my friends for a drink. I’m Chloé, by the way.” Enjolras held her eyes for a solid second: “No, I don’t think so.” He waited for a beat before turning away in clear dismissal.

The girl shrugged, mouth twisting in petulance, and took her leave with a toss of long hair. Courfeyrac was grimacing; Marius was puffing up like an indignant balloon; Boubacar had taken out his phone and started texting. Only Grantaire was looking at him, face caught halfway in between a tense frown and something akin to amusement.

“That was very unkind of you,” Cosette said, sniffing a little.

It was unclear whether she meant his attack on her charity work in Mali or his rejection of Chloé’s advances. He took the former and carried on where he’d left off: “ _He who feeds you, controls you_. That’s a quote by Thomas Sankara, someone you should definitely google before you go back to Mali this fall. There can be no dignity, no true de-colonization if structural dependency continues to be fostered. Your attitude is regrettable, but it reflects perfectly what we are taught to believe, here in the heart of the beast –“

“Enjolras, _calme-toi_ ,” Courfeyrac injected sharply. Cosette had started crying and was standing to leave. Marius hurried to go after her, shooting them all confused, angry looks. “ _Putain_ , why did you have to eviscerate her like that? She’s nineteen!”

“If she’s old enough to work with children in Mali, she’s old enough to hear the truth.” Enjolras countered, temper rising as he watched Marius pull Cosette into a comforting hug a few paces away. “And no, I won’t go apologize. She should educate herself before delving into charity at the other end of the world.”

Grantaire spoke up. Hearing his voice came as a shock – he had remained silent throughout the whole fiasco. “Well, who doesn’t know and love the humanitarians of the French middle class? It is such a reassurance to their egos. _Oui, Madmoiselle_ , you’re doing good, you alone are righting the wrongs of this world! You may go to an exotic place and have a grand, worldly experience for your CV. Oh, and the photographs you take for Instagram, with all the little black children in front of their huts!”

Enjolras’ first impulse was to grapple for a riposte. Then, he realized with awe, that he wholeheartedly agreed with Grantaire’s little speech. Boubacar broke out into chuckles, real ones this time; great, heaving guffaws that made his entire belly shake. Enjolras smiled at him, reassured that his words weren’t ill-received with the new acquaintance.

His stomach dropped a few feet into the ground when Boubacar raised a hand and scratched at the nape of Grantaire’s neck.

It was an intensely private gesture. A gesture reserved for family members and lovers. Grantaire merely tilted his head to the side and allowed Boubacar to stroke a broad swipe down his spine. Courfeyrac, _who had spent Grantaire’s last heat with him_ , seemed oblivious to all this. He was watching Marius and Cosette making out, face full of concern.

The anger was back with a vengeance, but a different sort altogether, something he couldn’t properly articulate. Enjolras schooled his face back to normal and pushed down the ugly feeling with the heel of an imaginary boot. “And where do you know Grantaire from?” 

Boubacar laughed again, showing a slightly jagged front tooth: “We grew up together, ain’t that right? He lived just a few doors down from me, and –“

“Yes, yes, childhood best friends,” Grantaire cut him off hastily, half rising off the ground. “Bouba, I’ve a shift at seven, we should be going soon. I simply can’t wait to go serve some American tourists badly cooked bouillabaisse. My life resembles a motivational postcard these days, you know what they say: Skills are cheap, passion is priceless. And I am absolutely the most passionate waiter in all of fucking Paris.” 

Grantaire seemed shifty, eyes darting this way and that, left hand drumming out a staccato against his knee. It was as if someone had hit the pause button: Enjolras finally allowed himself to _look_.

He took in the sweat on the side of his temples first, the matted curls that glinted reddish-black against the waning light; second was the healing bruise high on his right cheekbone; third came the anxious purse of his lips. Adhering to his usual sloppy dress code, Grantaire was wearing a tank top that showed half his torso at the sides, odd tattoos peeking out against his ribcage.

“Well, I’ll be off, then.”

Enjolras blinked and raised a half-hearted hand in goodbye. Boubacar gave him a little salute before hurrying after Grantaire, who was already halfway across the park, walking with the gait of someone supremely harassed in a rush to get away. There was a slouch to his shoulders, a droop to the posture of his neck.

“Oh, has R already left, then?” Courfeyrac came jogging back to him, pouting a little. “I barely spoke to him and his friend.” Enjolras hadn’t even noticed his absence to begin with. He leaned back to catch the retreating forms of Marius and Cosette, arm in arm with one another.

“Wow, and this is why I can’t take you anywhere, Enjolras.” Courfeyrac crossed his arms and scowled for a few seconds. But his was a face made for guileless pleasure, and he dismissed the hard feelings with the wave of a hand.

Enjolras shook out his sore limbs, suddenly grateful to be alone with his friend again, supremely annoying as he was. “Let’s go home, shall we?”

They walked back to Goutte d’Or and got Thai take-out on the way. Courfeyrac wisely avoided discussing the encounter at the park and started prattling on about his new involvement with _SOS Racisme_. It was enough of a distraction that he didn’t think of Grantaire again until he had gone to bed.

Outside the open windows, Paris buzzed with the distinct verve only summers provided. The air was muggy and warm around him as he dialled Combeferre’s number, stretched out on the bed in his boxers.

“ _Ouai_.”

“Finally. Are you back in Lyon, then?”

“Nope, just the slightly larger village with slightly better reception. Update on Paris?”

Enjolras sighed. It was good to speak with Combeferre, he’d missed it without consciously realizing. “Well, we shot a video that’s being edited with the footage from Beaumont-sur-Oise, my article on housing policy was published, we’ve been discussing insurrectionary anarchism and I met Musichetta again.” He paused, suddenly awkward. “Well. And I’ve been doing research on the 2005 riots.”

Combeferre made a vague humming noise. As always, he distilled the information and went for the most pressing points first: “Musichetta? The student from Toulouse you met last year?”

“I spent heat with her.” Enjolras bit his tongue but forged on in an effort to purge himself of all the unpleasant thoughts that had been running through his mind. “Last week. She propositioned me, and I said yes.”

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line. “That’s unexpected,” Combeferre said, keeping his voice light. “Did you enjoy it?”

“I suppose it was fine,” Enjolras scratched at his head, eyes squeezing shut in annoyance. The words came in a deluge once he opened his mouth again: “I don’t quite understand them, Courfeyrac and Grantaire. They must somehow be in love with each other, right? Some days I swear Courfeyrac is so – so infatuated he can’t speak two sentences without mentioning him, and yet… well, today Grantaire was at Buttes-Chaumont with another fellow –“

“What’s not to understand?” Combeferre replied mildly, effectively cutting him off. “They like each other, they fuck.”

“But – yes, of course, I know that,” Enjolras rolled his eyes, though there was no one to see it. “They just seem so callous with each other. Never mind, it isn’t important.”

“Hmm,” Combeferre was doing his thoughtful humming again. “It’s bothering you, the way the two of them do things.”

“Never mind,” He repeated, feeling foolish under Combeferre’s long distance scrutiny. A terrible thought wedged itself at the forefront of his mind: Grantaire, sandwiched between his friend Boubacar and Courfeyrac, kissing one while the other sucked on his neck. Grantaire, in bed with both of them, bent over on all fours, head drooping while two sets of hands roamed over the bronzed skin of his torso –

“You aren’t listening.” Combeferre commented casually, dry amusement apparent in his voice.

“Yes, I should be going to sleep now –“

“ _Enjolras_. I’ll be back in three days.” The sentence was punctuated with a sigh. “We’ll talk then, _d’accord_?”

“ _D’accord_.”

*

While Enjolras first learned about police brutality in theory, Grantaire had already acquired hands-on experience at age thirteen.

He had not yet presented and thus ran wild admits the housing blocks with a pack of friends. Thinking back, it seemed awfully unfair to have the glorious summer break reduced to that one incident. Most days were spent playing football on the concrete court in uncoordinated teams, the younger children getting in the way while the pubescent ones shoved and screamed.

Grantaire found a photograph while going through the cluttered apartment of his _jeda_ , a confused group picture with half the boys distracted by something off frame: tall, gangly Issaka, broad Boubacar, his cousin Mahamadou sporting his outrageous do-rag, Zahid with his toothy grin, Mohamed striking a gangster pose and at the outer edge, pale-faced little Yacine Grantaire, poking at a piece of trash.

This group, plus or minus a few other kids, lurked around the entrance of building block C on August 3rd, 2005. That was the year unprecedented riots shook the _banlieues_ of Paris, burning down cars and public buildings with all the rage of those that were too long unheard, who knew justice was better served with a Molotov cocktail, who intimately felt equality as the myth that it was, who were well acquainted with the sole of society’s boots kicking down.

Grantaire at thirteen had a half-developed world view, a fuzzy, instinctual knowledge that told him to run when police cars turned a corner, and to speak his best French when an officer approached him. Unlike the rest of his friends, he was merely suspicious by association, not by skin-colour. He had been searched a few times, but was left mostly alone when he cooperated and kept his mouth shut around the vowels and consonants of Arabic.

This group sat on the front steps of building C, the bolder ones already smoking cheap cigarettes while everyone traded around cards of famous footballers. Zinedine Zidane was passed back and forth no less than seven times when the police car, an unsuspecting silver Peugeot, pulled up with three policemen sat inside.

The children scattered, but not fast enough.

Grantaire remembered everything in bits and flashes. How the policemen dragged back the ones that had run off. How everyone had to face the wall to be methodically searched for sharp weapons and drugs. How Mahamadou had to take off his do-rag. Issaka making a run for it and slammed to the ground. How Boubacar’s aunt traipsed downstairs and screamed herself hoarse.

This is what she said: “Have you no shame? Are you coming every day now, Messieurs? To beat our children? Look at them, ain’t yous funny – pushing around the _gamins_ , feeling like big, strong men. Shall I make coffee when you come back tomorrow? Oh, how yous make the mothers cry around here!”

They were let go, eventually, after the commotion had died down. All except Issaka, as they were looking for his older brother, who was supposedly wanted for theft, or something of the like. Grantaire still knew the way Issa had cried, childish heaving sobs, half his face an open wound from the pavement.

He knew then, looking at his battered friend, that they were all part of a France that no one gave two shits about. Years later, after escaping that very reality and successfully passing as white, _as French_ , Grantaire would wake up in the middle of the night with nothing tethering him to the planet besides Issaka’s face, torn-up and bloodied and so, so dear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to briefly mention the 2005 riots in Clichy-sous-Bois. Enjolras wrote about it in relation to his article on post-war housing policy, while Grantaire remembered it as part of his boyhood. 
> 
> On October 27th 2005, Bouna Traore (15), Zyed Benna (17) and Muhittin Altun (17) ran away from a police patrol car and hid inside an electricity substation. There, Traoré and Benna were killed by tens of thousands of volts. Altun was heavily injured. [[1]](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywjw8y/paris-suburb-commemorates-ten-years-since-two-teens-deaths-sparked-the-2005-french-riots)
> 
> The subsequent three weeks saw riots break out across the country. 
> 
> I find it unnecessary to delve into the material damage, but would like to stress how much it showcases the divide between the run-down estates these boys lived in and the rest of France. No matter the involvement of the officers (who were acquitted ten years later, in 2015 [[2]](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/15/trial-france-racial-divide)), it was systemic police brutality that killed Traore and Benna.


	4. Volunteers against ISIS, or: Mating Bites

(September 2016)

“Here, help me,” Éponine let out a whistle, crooking a finger towards him. She was perched on the lid of the toilet, skinny feet propped up on the bathtub rim. “Come on, you have artist’s hands, it’s extra smooth when you do it.”

Grantaire sighed, balanced his joint on a roll of toilet paper and set down his beer. “Give me a second, then.” He stripped out of his own tattered jeans, running a hand down the exposed skin of his thigh. “Might as well shave if we’re doing this, right?”

“Yes, don’t make that face. _Allez_ , Yacine!”

Hearing his own name out of her mouth still felt like a mild jolt of electricity zapping up his spine. But Éponine had been nothing if not insistent when it came to the parts of himself that’d been conveniently omitted, ruthlessly prying everything open that he had kept closed. Now she was all but waving the pink razor at him, beckoning until they had both settled in the narrow bathtub with copious amounts of shaving cream.

They passed the joint back and forth for a while, Grantaire carefully shaving away the stubble of dark hair on Éponine’s sturdy left calf while savouring the gentle high. “Did you hear from you father?”

“Oh yes, he’s out again. _Maman’s_ pretending to be super thrilled, though she’d been having other men over throughout the year. Same old, same old. They cheat on each other, they get caught at petty offenses, they have screaming rows, the neighbours call the police, call social services, call the fire department if there’s smoke – wait a minute! You know all of this already.” Éponine narrowed her eyes at him, scanning down his torso. “ _What’s that?_ Did you see Courfeyrac again?”

She fitted her thumb against the side of his waist, where a bruise was blooming blueish purple. “I thought you weren’t going to fuck him again! Wasn’t it weird because of Enjolras –“

“We met,” Grantaire interrupted with his voice raised. “At a bar last night. You know how it is with routines and diving back into them. One, two, three drinks, he pays, I make him laugh, he fucks me doggy style. Boom. _Et voilá_ , that’s me and Courfeyrac, best friends forever.” He tapped the joint against the sink, studiously avoiding her eyes.

He had gotten raving drunk a week ago and started sobbing about his thing with Courfeyrac, how it was just a distraction, and what did it all mean anyways when Enjolras was dating someone else, someone very beautiful, an Italian Omega who was doing her PhD, with a beautiful name: Musichetta. Beautiful, perfect Musichetta whom Enjolras had spent heat with, and what the fuck made sense anymore in the world, _putain de merde_ , and how could he ever go to a meeting again and see the two of them –

He had, apparently, forced Éponine to delete all the numbers of Les Amis from his phone and sworn that he would from now on become a self-respecting person. The type of person that didn’t pine uselessly and certainly the type that didn’t fuck the best friend of his unrequited love in order to feel just a tiny mite better, just an edge of the normalcy that covered the ugly desperation.

So much for that. 

“Well, you know me, ‘Ponine. Always one to uphold drunk resolutions. I suppose I should be grateful he still wants me in his bed at all, the way I’ve been ghosting him. There’s this miniature Joly seated on my shoulder, anyhow, and he keeps acting as my moral compass, my guardian angel. We Muslims don’t have that sort of thing, but anyhow! Last night his verdict was: Bros before hoes, so I fucked Courfeyrac to save our flagging friendship.” The last part came out flat, his voice going hoarse while he carried on rambling nonsense. “Courfeyrac is great, really. I’m the one buried under a steaming shit pile of issues. Drinking issues. Drug issues. Sex addiction. Perpetually lying to all my friends… should I go on?”

“Yes, please do,” Éponine said with her unnatural, deathly calm, grabbing the pink razor from his hand before dousing his groin with shaving cream.

She went to town while Grantaire let his mouth run on autopilot, a verbal vomit of all the things he’d been thinking deep down: “I saw her, Éponine, she was wonderful. I knew this day would come, really, it was just dumb luck that no one had caught his eye until now. This is like a purging, _bah oui_ , seeing them together is purging me of all the stupid fantasies I secretly had –“

“I’ve been looking at Marius with his perfect, pretty Cosette for almost a year now. How do you think I feel?”

“I thought you felt, quote unquote, high as a kite and down to fuck?” Grantaire lay back into the tub while she worked her way down the inside of his thigh. The slippery slide of newly hairless limbs tickled, and he let out an involuntary chuckle amongst all the fresh misery.

Éponine snorted. “Yes, I do feel better. But not because I’ve purged myself by looking at them sucking face! I simply avoided them and gave myself time, _just like you should_.”

“I am. I haven’t gone to a meeting in two weeks! Am I not allowed to have sex now? Should I live like a monk and abstain from spreading my legs to _give myself time_? Is this your latest new age hippie thing now – healing through abstinence? Will I be washing my pubes with clay soon?” Grantaire cupped her right breast, the more sensitive one, and rolled her nipple between thumb and forefinger. 

“What pubes?” Éponine deadpanned, aiming the showerhead at his lap. “And _you_ just called _yourself_ a sex addict!” She held on to her stern face, but Grantaire knew her well after years of intimacy: her voice already had a tell-tale hitch to it and she was smiling a little. “Disclaimer: I’ve been fucking Montparnasse again recently, just so you know. His cock is gigantic, I’m not even lying. I don’t want you to feel inadequate when my reaction turns out a bit underwhelming…”

They both burst out laughing like little children.

“Let me eat you out,” she offered.

“Alright, alright, if you insist,” Grantaire smirked and made himself give a disaffected half-shrug, feeling hollow and awful and happily aroused all at once. “You shaved me down there, you should get to reap the benefits.”

“ _Exactement_. Who is this Courfeyrac, and why does he get to fuck you while I do all the shaving, the girl talk and the emotional baggage carrying?” Sliding onto her stomach, Éponine glanced up at him with a twinkle of mischief in her eyes. “And tell me, do you truly believe that Enjolras is any good in bed?”

“Non, _arrêt_ , stop it!” Grantaire batted at her, heartbeat picking up just at the mention of Enjolras’ name. “Blasphemy!”

He let out a long moan when Éponine licked a broad stripe up his perineum. Her voice vibrated against the sensitive skin there, the flicker of tongue making him feel slick and loose and unbearably aroused. Éponine, cruel as she was, didn’t let up: “Just imagine it, that Musichetta would be all sensual and curvy in bed, and he’ll just climb on top of her and saw back and forth like she’s plank wood.”

She delved back in, licking inside him with a few breathy hums. Grantaire covered his face with both hands, imagination going haywire while his newly smooth legs spasmed on Éponine’s slim shoulders.

Enjolras would be passionate in bed, the same way he was with anything he applied himself to. Gorgeous Enjolras, the long lines of his body straining with tension, hair darkened with sweat, eyes wide open while he looked down at Musichetta. The lazer-like beam of his attention all on her, on giving her pleasure, because she was fascinating and lively, beautiful and opinionated and well-read.

“ _Putain_!”

Spots danced in front of his eyes while he neared orgasm. Éponine, bless her, crawled up and started fumbling deftly for a condom while staving off his peak by squeezing the base of his cock. “The strap-on is too far away, I’m afraid.”

“We’ll leave that for round two,” he shot back, already warmed up for their habitual back-and-forth during sex. She rolled on the condom and lowered herself, eyes going half-lidded with pleasure when he reached down and found her clit.

“I bet you fifty euros Enjolras couldn’t do this for you,” Éponine grinned at him, slightly feral while undulating her hips, the drag in and out of her snug heat making both of them shudder. “And I bet you a hundred that Marius Pontmercy couldn’t find your clitoris if you gave him a search light and a map!” He quipped back.

“Oh please, I’d train him until he was a pro.”

“I’m sure you would.”

They found a rhythm in no time, borne out of the sort of familiarity only yearlong friendships could carry so easily. By the time they were done, Grantaire was full on crying, nestling his snotty nose against the crook of Éponine’s neck while big heaving sobs wrecked through him.

In many ways, this did resemble a purging, but instead of being left clean or at the very least, blank, Grantaire felt like a dried-out husk. The truth was bitter and hard to face, but there it was anyways: Enjolras had never liked him, he barely tolerated him at the best of times. His feelings, which to him had always seemed too grand to encompass with words, were merely specks of dust in Enjolras’ world, which revolved around different things altogether.

“I was never good enough for him, anyways.” He told Éponine while they went to bed with a fresh joint, listening to guitar music with their eyes bloodshot. She had been half-dozing, but struggled to sit up once she registered his words: “Take that back, R. I mean it – _take it back, now_.”

Grantaire tried to shrug, his head lolling back. Everything was becoming blissfully slow, the ceiling retreating into the distance beyond his eyelids. There were hot tears gathering in the corner of his eyes, but even that felt strangely pleasant.

“It’s true. I’ve always been a fucking waste of space. Could you imagine him dating me? Right, no. Neither can I.” He gave a barking laugh, taking another hit. “ _Alors_ , should I take him back to my grandmother’s, and make him baklava? Take him to mosque to meet all my cousins? A better person would have enough pride to do it, but not me. No, I’m a coward, and a liar, and apparently I’m also delusional enough to –“

Éponine slapped her hand over his mouth, effectively ending his self-eulogy. She then plugged the joint from between his fingers, exhaling a cloud of smoke into his face before pre-emptively covering his lips with her own.

*

Enjolras’ mother was once an aspiring model.

The only fashion spread she’d been photographed for hung in their sitting room for most of Enjolras’ childhood. He used to study it at length, taking in the garish, powder-pink confection she was dressed in; the way her eyebrows arched; how part of her cocked elbow was obscured by the lettering “VOGUE”.

Time and again he was reassured over the years that he had inherited her undeniable, inimitable beauty. The matter of fact was that Enjolras and his mother looked nothing alike – they were both blond, and tall, and had eyes of approaching shades of blue, but all in all they couldn’t have looked more different.

Even as she aged well past forty, her eyes remained wide and her nose a dainty button in the middle of a heart-shaped face that gave her something decidedly girlish. Enjolras, in turn, had a scissor-cut profile with stark brows that would’ve been harsh without his fair colouring.

As a contrarian youth Enjolras took care to set himself off from her in all conceivable manners. Where she stood upright, he slouched. While she made a point to smile at everyone, he frowned. When she moisturized her pout, his lips remained in a determined pinch. While she took care to braid her golden tresses every night, he shaved his head repeatedly.

With the onset of his political awakening, the concept of beauty as social capital dawned on him with the force of a sledgehammer. Those were the years he routinely erupted into snide tirades whenever someone paid him a compliment. Combeferre, who had by then, against all odds, become his close friend and impossibly loyal companion, took care to never mention Enjolras’ outward appearance.

Even if it was merely a smudge of ink on his nose.

The lack of sex, while unquestionably related to his hatred of control-loss, was practically grounded in his violent rejection of anyone who dared to approach him on the basis of his looks. This, of course, impacted his own sense of physical attraction, going so far that he could hardly admit it to himself whenever he found someone even remotely _interesting_.

It remained an ongoing debate with Courfeyrac, who held the firm belief that there was nothing more divine than the magnetism between bodies. Enjolras insisted on being valued only for his thoughts and believes. That one time he had nondescript, uninspiring sex with Courfeyrac’s violinist acquaintance only served to strengthen his resolve.

This, of course, changed with Musichetta.

Though that is inaccurate storytelling – it changed with Grantaire and Courfeyrac, first, before it morphed, rippled and became impossible to ignore.

*

(October 2016)

Nour was getting married.

Post-haste, as soon as possible. Before her belly started showing. Grantaire got an earful when he finally forced himself back to Aulnay-sous-Bois to attend the gathering after mosque on Friday. Biscuits on paper plates, coca-cola and orange juice in plastic cups, the men gesturing at each other in one room while the women clustered together in another, much smaller one. 

Younger people, mostly those that lacked proper piety, took to smoking outside. It had been a good two years since Grantaire last attended these congregations. He stood among his old acquaintances and listened while they gossiped about disgraced Nour. Grantaire shared around his joint and received some helpful, if rather exaggerated information. 

The _Mosquée Assalam_ hadn’t changed a mite since he moved to Paris, and neither had its worshippers. He danced around between conversations, Said telling him about Algiers at length, Hakim talking about the new kebab bistro his uncle just opened, Sélim going on about getting evicted from his last flat.

He spotted Nour after an hour or so, though the only thing recognizable about her was the large nose they shared as a family trait. She was wearing a hijab in a flattering bright green and had covered her legs beneath a thick skirt that threatened to drag over her shoes.

“Cousin!” Grantaire jogged after her, skirting around a grimy puddle on the uneven side-walk. “ _Wallah_ , Nour, wait up!”

She stopped, turned and narrowed her eyes at him like a predator preparing to lunge. Growing up with her, he was more than acquainted with that look, but it still made him falter in his steps. “And what the fuck are you doing back here, _Monsieur Bac_?”

“When have you become a hijabi, eh?”

“You know it’s been five months since I last saw you, right? And you didn’t even come back for Eid.” Nour was flaring her nostrils in that familiar way, the corners of her mouth turning down.

“Hakim asked me to join them after prayers,” he replied slowly, switching to Arabic in an attempt to appease her. “Cousin, everyone’s talking –“

“Oh, _khallas_! Stop it! Not you, too. So what if I got knocked up, you don’t get to judge me, not you, Yacine! _Merde_ , you fucked every last guy on the block –“

Grantaire turned and saw his old friends staring, pointing and whispering amongst themselves. He quickly caught Nour’s elbow and stirred her away. “ _Allez_ , let’s walk for a bit. And of course I’m not judging you. I’m the slut between the two of us, aren’t I?”

That, at least, got a laugh out of her before the tears came in an unholy flood.

Nour was fucking miserable. Her mother was so disappointed in her. She couldn’t afford to leave work at the post office. She’d been wearing the hijab for a few weeks now, and it did make her feel better, but it was also horribly itchy on her scalp. The father, some bloke named Omar, was panicked as hell. Everyone was a horrible gossip. They were now engaged to be married, and she wasn’t even sure whether she liked him _that_ much. To _get married_.

“And you – you’re too good for us now?” She accepted the tissue he handed over, dabbing at her eyes before turning her terrifying laser focus onto him. “I hear you still run with the boxing crowd, but you never have time for me, or the boys, or grandmother…”

Grantaire looked away, grimacing inwardly. He had no excuses. “I was busy. Work. University.”

Nour rubbed at her reddened nose, driving on in that insistent way of hers: “You were in Beaumont this summer, at the riots. Salah’s friend Youcef told me he spotted you.”

Grantaire snorted out loud at that. “I wasn’t rioting!”

“Well, how the fuck are we supposed to know?” Nour turned away, eyes going steely again. “I have to head home now. Are you coming to let _jeda_ at least get a look at you? You know she’s cleaning at the city hall now. She always takes the late shifts these days.”

“I know,” Grantaire lied through his teeth. He hadn’t known any of these things specifically. “And I can’t. I have a meeting at eight.”

“Whatever you say,” Nour shrugged, though she allowed a hug before they parted ways.

Grantaire retained his composure until he boarded one of the busses heading back into Paris. He took a seat at the far back, curling into half a parenthesis before letting the tears come. Going back was always too much. Seeing his favourite cousin Nour was too much. Knowing that he was an ingrate who denied half (or most) of himself was definitely too much. The guilt was threatening to eat him alive.

It took the entire two-hour drive for him to calm down properly. The bus took a detour through Charles de Gaulle Airport, and he was quickly surrounded by harried travellers, tourists and businessmen, as well as their bulky luggage. Traffic dragged on forever and the evening sky above the freeway filled with the hostile honking of commuters.

By the time he pushed through the doors of the Musain, it was already nearing nine. Everyone was seated at the back of the bar, as per usual. Quite a few new faces, empty beer glasses and a lively debate going on. Enjolras was listening, his hands steepled together while he frowned at something Bahorel was saying. Next to him, Musichetta had her head tilted in an attentive manner, red lipstick slightly faded on her full mouth.

Grantaire slunk back to sit with Bossuet and Joly, nursing the immediate ache in his chest. It had gotten better with time, seeing Enjolras and Musichetta together. By now, the pain had gotten almost fortifying, a friendly reminder of what could never be. “We’re debating the burka,” Bossuet told him in a half-whisper. “State secularism and the like, you know.”

As if a fucking afternoon at mosque wasn’t enough. As if the horrible bus ride didn’t suffice. As if his conversation with cousin Nour hadn’t left him completely exhausted. As if he didn’t have to look at Enjolras and Musichetta, most photogenic power couple in all of France.

“ _Putain_ ,” Grantaire said under his breath, considering whether he should just get up and leave. But that would undoubtedly lead to uncomfortable questions, so he stayed and cringed while everyone else talked and talked.

“The burka, or any headscarf” Marius gave an awkward wave. “Is a symbol of oppression, first and foremost, isn’t it? Shouldn’t that be reason enough to oppose it, even without taking into account laicism?”

“Religion is rooted in oppression,” Enjolras answered, already gearing up to launch into a more general rant.

Grantaire couldn’t help himself, he scoffed out loud and relished the looks he got when he cited the quote from memory: “ _Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people!”_

Enjolras was looking at him now. There was something awfully electrifying in having his full attention. For just a few seconds, he wasn’t gazing at Combeferre, or his unionist friend Loïc, or beautiful, elegant Musichetta. His eyes were on Grantaire, and they simultaneously managed to burn and pleasure him in the most ghastly, unbearable mixture.

“Marius!” Grantaire announced, turning away from Enjolras’ discomfiting regard. “You went to a proper catholic school, didn’t you?”

“ _Oui_?” Marius blinked at him. He was wearing a simple gold band around his ring finger, and with a jolt Grantaire remembered that he had gotten engaged to Cosette last month, ridiculously young as they were. He had been too busy drinking, snorting and smoking away his heartbreak to notice properly.

The sight made him suddenly, awfully angry. As if there was anything more backward and oppressive than marriage. Nour popped back into his mind, wiping her tear-blurred eyes with the corner of a sleeve.

Grantaire gave him a smile before launching his verbal grenades. He was going to be fucking unkind. But then again, Les Amis had started it by debating the hijab. “ _Chér_ Marius, would you go up to the nuns who taught you to read Latin and to fear our lord and saviour Jesus Christ and demand that they take off their habits?”

“Of course not!” It jerked out of Marius, as if on reflex. From the corner of his eye, Grantaire saw Joly groan silently into a fresh handkerchief.

“Why not?” Enjolras was sitting up straighter now, his eyes blazing. “Why not abolish the catholic church while we’re at it? Or any church. You just heard Marx, loud and clear: Religion, opiate to the masses in his time. Why hold onto institutions that stand for nothing but bigotry, and the patriarchy, and total subservience of free will?”

“Exactly, why not?” Grantaire caught Courfeyrac’s amused look and summoned a cocky smirk. “I’ll tell you why not! Because this entire fucking discussion isn’t about Catholicism, it’s based on Islamophobic nonsense. Are you people seriously sitting here debating whether or not women in France are allowed to wear whatever the hell they like? So what if some lady decides to cover her hair for Allah? Are you going to tear it off her and force her to be emancipated?”

Marius had flushed a violent scarlet colour: “No, of course not,” he repeated, eyes wide. Enjolras, however, seemed unimpressed: “We’re talking about laicism. It applies to all religions, Islam isn’t exempt from that.”

“Well, you aren’t labelled a terrorist for being catholic. You don’t get rejections at job interviews because your name is Joseph. You don’t constantly have to prove your worth and belonging to this great republic for wearing a giant cross around your neck!” Grantaire was breathing heavily, and he quickly shut his mouth. Everyone was looking at him, and for a second he felt utterly transparent.

“I think we’re speaking about two different matters here,” Feuilly said slowly, but Grantaire was erupting again, unable to stop himself. Before his mind’s eye, he could see Nour and his _jeda_ and his aunts, and he knew exactly what Les Amis would think of them. Veiled women from the _banlieues_ , poor oppressed creatures. They’d pity them at best.

“Religion,” he enunciated, “is complete bogus. Fuck Allah, fuck the virgin Mary, if you ask me. But you are starting to sound like right-wingers in here, going on about the burka and the hijab.”

“You don’t mean that, R!” Bahorel called out, “we’re debating it like any other topic, how does that equate us with the _Front National_?”

“ _Putain!_ ” Grantaire yelled. “How can you not see what I mean?”

“I think you should leave and calm down,” Enjolras interrupted him, mouth a straight line on his face. The severe look was unfairly becoming on him, and Grantaire shot to his feet, anger and humiliation mixing until he was quite light-headed. Across from him, Musichetta made an inquiring noise and placed a hand on Enjolras’ shoulder.

That was the last drop.

“Oh, well, if that’s your wish, then I should make haste and leave you be. Do carry on talking about the burka, and whether it’s part of France, and whether all Muslim women need to be liberated by Marius fucking Pontmercy,” he spat at them, insides twisting in a terrible burn. He turned on his heels and left, noticing at once that he’d forgotten his beanie, but far too angry to turn back. 

Exhaustion kicked in once he got on the _métro_. The tension bled out of him and left nothing but a curious distance. A distance from everyone, all of his supposed friends and comrades. And Enjolras… Enjolras didn’t care for him anyways, he would much rather that Grantaire didn’t come at all. He was just a disturbance, a noisy nuisance that kept them from rational, productive discussions.

He tried to call Éponine, but she was at her second job, too busy to answer her phone.

At home, his roommate Adrien was celebrating Friday with a handful of his Ecuadorian friends. He’d become a proper hippie after a few months in Latin America, the Ayahuasca taking type with fresh dreadlocks gracing his pink scalp. Grantaire joined them and tossed in a few grams of weed to share. Within the hour he was spectacularly high, lights dancing, eyes rolling back in his head, skin feeling weirdly tight.

Luz, one of the Ecuadorians, talked dirty Spanish into his ear while Grantaire hummed out a melody. They got into it, flowing into an atonal back and forth only the truly drugged could ever find appealing. Consequently, he didn’t hear the pings of text messages on his phone or the buzz of incoming calls. He didn’t even hear the doorbell when it rang at one in the morning and was jerked out of his reverie when Jehan plopped down next to him in their carpet circle.

“Hello, friend. Let’s have a drag of that,” he said pleasantly, offering his hand for Luz to shake. She handed him the newest joint making its round and shook his hand, all in one go. “R, you left awfully fast. I dare say that you missed out on all the best bits.”

Grantaire squinted at him, trying his best to focus. Jehan was dressed like the eccentric hipster that he was, and the clash of neons and plaid made looking at him while stoned somewhat of a challenge. “And why would that be, Prouvaire? Did Enjolras tell someone else to get lost? He usually reserves those pleasantries for my humble self.”

Luz pouted at him, making grabby fingers at the joint. Grantaire took one last drag before tugging himself and Jehan back to his cluttered little room. His brain had gone cottony with the rush of it, and he felt ready to pass out for the next day or so.

“Well, for starters, Musichetta and Courfeyrac _both_ told Enjolras off,” Jehan dumped himself onto a mound of pillows, rainbow-socked feet hitching up to rest on a patch of wall that wasn’t covered with postcards, drawings and newspaper clippings. “Then Musichetta gave us an impromptu lesson on feminism and Islam. She was _fierce as fuck_.”

“Oh great,” Grantaire deadpanned. His insides twisted in bitter discomfort at the thought of Musichetta defending him. Perfect, beautiful Musichetta who didn’t back away from controversy. Someone truly worthy of Enjolras. “That makes me feel so amazing, _merci beaucoup,_ Jehan.”

“Well,” Jehan said slowly, magicking a leather-bound notebook out of the non-existent pockets of his skinny jeans. He spoke deliberately while jotting down a few things with the stub of a pencil: “Well, I suppose it’s quite impossible for you to like her, but I heard from Joly, who heard from Courfeyrac – and I’m certain he counts as a verified source…”

“Out with it!” Grantaire bellowed, covering his ears pre-emptively while he flopped down on his mattress next to Jehan.

“ _Alors_ , Courfeyrac said that Enjolras isn’t that serious about her. Like, it isn’t a proper relationship, they’re more akin to – fuckbuddies.”

“ _What?_ How is that – no, listen. I don’t want any more details.” He shook his head when Jehan made to speak again and valiantly fought the dizzy spell that accosted him. “It’s fine. I’m attempting to get over him. Or at least, I’m attempting _something_. Let’s not talk about it anymore, I already feel like I stepped on dog shite, my day’s been absolutely _merde_ , as well. Let’s just – talk about something else. How are you, Prouvaire? How’s the Kurdish language course?”

Jehan stared at him in that unsettling way only he managed so well. After a solid stretch of five seconds, he broke out into a smile that showed the gap between his front teeth. “Oh, it’s great. I’ve a tandem from Turkey and everything. I can manage simple conversation just fine now. You know, the things you need – where’s the loo, how do I reload this gun, ISIS is at North-by-North-East.”

It took him a good few moments to make sense of Jehan’s words. Their effect was sobering, downright unpleasant. His stomach tightened with anxiety and in a flash, the comforting buzz of weed had turned into a swirling pit of dread. “You’re still thinking about it. Fighting against ISIS.”

Jehan kept on smiling, keeping his voice deceptively light. “I recently spoke to a member of the YPG. They take recruits, you just need to get there. Honestly, it isn’t that difficult.” He swerved and changed the topic, navigating the conversation with the upper hand of the sober. “You didn’t let me finish. Courfeyrac was very valiant in defending your honour tonight. Isn’t all that casual fucking getting a bit serious for you? I mean, it’s been what – five months?”

Grantaire, however, wasn’t as easily side-tracked. He had heard Jehan waxing poetic about the fight against ISIS before. He simply hadn’t taken it very seriously. Who in their right mind would, when faced down with the possibility of actual war? The gravity of Jehan’s possible choice was suddenly dawning on him, making the acid in his stomach churn: “You’re talking about joining the Kurdish militia. To fight against Islamists who will definitely behead you if they don’t bomb you to bits first.”

Jehan kept on smiling at him. “D’you have something to smoke hidden around here? We don’t have to talk about Enjolras’ unprecedented thing with Musichetta. Or your weird affair with Courfeyrac.”

“Behead you, Jehan. _Ça veut dire_ , cutting your head off. At the neck.” Grantaire leaned in close and framed Jehan’s loose, happy expression with both hands. “Do you want to die, Prouvaire?”

Jehan leaned into the touch, and the smile slipped off his face. Beneath the easy composure he wore his brows in a deep furrow, and there was something unbearably melancholy to the set of his mouth. Grantaire held him at stasis and refused to believe what he was learning. Jean Prouvaire, lover of literature, spreader of anarchism and failed part-time poet, had made up his mind to go to Syria.

“ _Putain_ , you’re serious?”

“R, you have to promise me you’ll tell no one.” Jehan slowly reached up and pulled a green beanie from his head. Grantaire identified it as his own after blinking a few times.

“ – the fuck? How can you ask that of me?”

“Promise me.”

“ – I know religious nut-cases like that, I grew up with some of them, blokes who fucking beat me up for doing _haram_ stuff, they always knew how to make it hurt –“

“Promise me, R.”

Grantaire tried to let go of Jehan’s face. His hands were sweating, and he was having trouble breathing. His issues with Enjolras, with Courfeyrac and Les Amis seemed laughably childish now. All the heartache and self-pity he’d indulged in retreated to the background, dulled to a low hum as opposed to the furious scream that had dictated his thoughts for the last month or so.

“ _Ça va_. You win. I promise, alright? Fuck. Fucking, bollocking shite.”

“I knew I could count on you,” Jehan said, back to his pensive nonchalance. There were laugh lines around his eyes that smoothed to even skin. “Now, get us something to smoke. And I want to hear about those guys you grew up with.”

*

SCENE: On the brand-new mid-century design sofa Courfeyrac’s mother recently sponsored.

TIME: After a long, futile day at work. Those strange hours between getting back home and going to bed, with nothing but sleep to buffer you from the next day, and the next, and the next.

[COMBEFERRE _and_ COURFEYRAC _are tangled up together, kissing with the lazy ease borne out of a decade of friendship. Rain is falling outside the window, blurring the sky to an undefinable stretch of watery grey._ _Occasionally, one of them speaks in a low voice, filling the room with ambient whispers._ ]

COURFEYRAC:

Look who’s being a voyeur! No need to praise us, I know we look really hot together. Everyone only has eyes for Enjolras, but honestly, I lucked out. _Regarde!_ Who can say no to the face of Alexandre Combeferre?

COMBEFERRE:

You say no all the time, Courf.

COURFEYRAC:

Well, I’ve sadly become immune after hanging around you for ten years, non-stop. The voyeurs – I mean, the viewers, readers and listeners are probably asking themselves: when did this happen? How the hell did we miss it? Two extremely hot Alphas getting it on, that shouldn’t escape anyone’s notice!

COMBEFERRE:

But it did. Courfeyrac and I, we started…

COURFEYRAC:

We started _fucking!_

COMBEFERRE:

We started seeing each other while everyone else was too wrapped up in their own antics. Marius and Cosette broke up. Enjolras and Grantaire launched their… situation.

[ _The two of them break out into chuckles_.]

COMBEFERRE:

That was also the winter Jehan left.

[ _Silence takes over the room again._ COURFEYRAC _buries his face against the crook of_ COMBEFERRE’S _neck. His voice is muffled when he speaks again_.]

COURFEYRAC:

Let’s talk about something else. Please.

COMBEFERRE:

Alright.

COURFEYRAC:

Please, Combeferre.

COMBEFERRE:

I studied hormones and designations that winter. Do you remember? It was fascinating. Most things we learn about designations are bullshit, did you know that? People are messy, and I mean – unruly, hard to quantify.

Designations are categories that were forged historically, they practically developed with modern medicine. I’d say that the assignment of designations at puberty is one of the pillars of western medicine.

COURFEYRAC:

It’s a pillar of bullshit, you mean.

COMBEFERRE:

Oh, on so many levels. Look at it this way – some nine percent of the female population is Alpha. This is determined by physiognomy, hormone levels and the good judgement of a trained physician.

[COURFEYRAC _lets out a snorting bark of laughter._ ]

COMBEFERRE:

If you look at the actual lab results, as I did that winter, you discover that there are no true standards, and that decisions are made depending on milligrams of difference. Éponine, she once told me that she developed breasts late, and that went into her Alpha designation.

COURFEYRAC:

 _Alors_ , but what about Omegas?

COMBEFERRE:

Let me finish, first. Male Alphas develop knots, as we both do. But the definition of what constitutes a knot varies medically – some Betas have them, but supposedly smaller. I only knot occasionally. Some people can will them away and choose to forgo knots altogether. Some people rut every month, some only once a year. Some – not at all. Like me.

COURFEYRAC:

And boy am I thankful for that, my arse couldn’t take it otherwise.

COMBEFERRE:

Hush, I’m explaining gender here. Beta – that’s the designation everyone is shoved into who fall between two extremes. Who fail to show significant, measurable changes during puberty.

These categories impact us, they shape us and trim us. They can advance us, or else they hold us back from certain things. We pretend that they are based on unchangeable laws of nature. But the truth is – _what_ , Courfeyrac?

COURFEYRAC:

Let me play devil’s advocate. This is usually Grantaire’s job – what about Omegas?

COMBEFERRE:

What about them? Everything I just named applies to Omegas as well, male and female. There are people like Grantaire, who have regular cycles. But most male Omegas who experience heat symptoms can’t and don’t bear children. We fetishize male Omegas not because they are rare, but because they’ve been historically disenfranchised and more prone to being abused. Because their very existence disproves the supposed binary people have tried to enforce over the last few centuries.

COURFEYRAC:

I love your righteous fury. Fuck gender, fuck designations. And most importantly, _fuck me_. We need to disprove societal norms by having as much sex as possible, you realize that, right? I’m not Omega, or whatever, but that doesn’t keep me from enjoying the hell out of your –

COMBEFERRE:

Excuse us.

[ _A moan escapes_ COURFEYRAC _when_ COMBEFERRE _reaches down to palm at his hardening cock. He is silenced with a deep kiss. Wrapped up in each other, they hardly notice when the scene fades to black._ ]

*

“Come on now, Gueulemer. I’ve got to run.”

Grantaire tried to shoulder his way past the hulking Alpha, rolling his eyes inwardly. Around him, most people in the ratty, old gymnasium had slowed their training routines to watch their exchange, even though it was by now a very old hat.

It was going to be one of those evenings.

Gueulemer, smug bastard that he was, had once again planted himself next to Grantaire during training, correcting his posture, his left hook, his footwork, even his fucking breathing pattern. All the while he’d strewn in lewd comments about _bouncing_ and _getting a real workout later_.

Usually, depending on the day, Grantaire would either humour his groping attempts or straight-out leave, claiming a busy schedule. What he honestly wanted to do most was beat Gueulemer’s slimy gob to a pulp – if it weren’t for the fact that the huge, towering _connard_ was perhaps the best boxer in the room at any given moment. Grantaire took pride in his athleticism, but he wasn’t entirely delusional.

“Well, how about we fuck off together, Grantaire?” Gueulemer’s face was shiny with sweat beneath his severe crew cut. He wiped at his wet face and stepped a little closer, entirely unphased by the luke-warm response. “Let’s get a drink around my place, what do you say?”

Grantaire forced himself into a grimaced half-smile: “Well, you see, I’m terribly flattered, but I’m meeting a friend in a bit. Mustn’t be late, and all that. Come on, now, let me through. We all know you’re the biggest chap around here, no need to prove it again.”

“A friend, you say? Is that the kind of friend that gets to bend you over?” Gueulemer threw him a triumphant look when a few guys around them chuckled. Grantaire dropped his eyes to the ground, anger and self-preservation warring inside him. How he’d love to gouge the bastard’s eyes out, show them exactly the kind of Omega he was.

Self-preservation won out, as it often did with the boxing crowd.

Grantaire knew that his presence and unorthodox methods were barely tolerated here, that the only thing keeping him around was his tie to Farid. Farid, well-respected and half a legend in these circles. Farid, who had taken ill recently and was nowhere to be seen. Grantaire grit his teeth and pushed himself to cast the room an amused, disaffected look. “Very funny – _très drôle_ , my friend. Now, I do really have to go…”

“Stay there. I’ll get my things, and then we’ll have dinner together.” Gueulemer’s tone brooked no argument, and everyone resumed their routines when he made for the lockers at the other end of the room. Grantaire stared after him in disbelief. Then he turned and walked out the door, indignation quickening his steps. This was the last drop.

_Stay there_ , the utter wanker had commanded.

“Oh, _Putain!_ ” Grantaire cursed, hands balling into fists while he half-jogged to the _métro_ station. The air, crisp and cold, stung his cheeks while he burned with humiliation at the thought of the derisive laughter. He tried to recall everyone who had joined in. Did he hear Pietro? Did Maxime react? Or maybe Abbas, Mr. Nice Guy Abbas who had always been civil to him, friendly even.

He got on the incoming train just in time, cursing his long way home. Paris was at times too small and simultaneously incomprehensibly, colossally vast. He jerked up when a heavy hand landed on his shoulder, shoving him back against a glass divider. “You walked awfully fast, Grantaire. I could barely keep up, you flighty little thing.”

Grantaire turned and gaped up at Gueulemer, who had somehow gotten on the same train. He looked positively furious, his bland features distorted into a sneer. “You’re not serious, man! Are you fucking following me now, Gueulemer? Are you honestly that desperate? Can you not stick your cock anywhere else?”

“I’ve been very patient with you,” Gueulemer intoned slowly, his hand tightening on Grantaire’s shoulder to the point of pain. “What a rude way to respond.”

“And I’ve been very fucking patient with _you!_ ” Grantaire cried out loud, the rest of his fake levity finally gone. “Let go of me and fuck off. _Maintenant_.”

People were looking now. He tried to shake off the giant paw holding him still, jerking his shoulder in a few futile movements. Gueulemer’s hand had slid up, his thumb now directly above Grantaire’s pulse, which was beating rabbit quick.

“What’s going on there?” Some commuter asked, but her attempt at an intervention seemed desultory. Most people were already turning back to their smartphones, disinterested in the way only Parisians could be. Grantaire sent her a grateful look and twisted in Gueulemer’s grasp.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Gueulemer said pleasantly. “We’re just having a minor disagreement.”

Everything felt surreal. Here he was, detained by a big brute who evidently had made plans to fuck him, surrounded by people who didn’t give a damn whether he agreed to those plans or not. Grantaire wasn’t some helpless damsel in distress, he certainly never needed anyone to step in on his behalf. He could face his own challengers, be they physical or verbal.

His eyes darted frantically to the floor, gliding past Gueulemer’s bobbing Adam’s apple and upwards to the fluorescent lights.

To his left, the doors beeped. In a split-second decision, Grantaire lurched forward and stumbled into a businessman who started cursing at him. But he was already out the doors, running as fast as his legs could carry him, weaving between a stream of faceless people.

The station was Stalingrad, he realized in a panicked haze while thundering down the stairs from the elevated platform. He’d wanted to change trains at Gare du Nord, but what the hell. Behind him, he could hear Gueulemer calling out above the hubbub, his voice laced with a sickly mix of anger and amusement.

Grantaire let his legs propel him, mind rambling on while he gasped for breath. He ran all the way to La Chapelle, fighting the urge to break out laughing at the absurdity of the situation while adrenaline and fear coursed through his body.

Knowing that Gueulemer was behind him only made him sprint faster.

He didn’t slow down to ask for help, though the thought occurred to him multiple times while he raced past all manner of people. Deep down, there was a petrified animal inside him, and it knew with a dead certainty that something truly abhorrent was going to happen if he dared to slow his steps.

“Come on now, don’t be irrational!” Gueulemer yelled in between panting breaths, and he sounded terrifyingly close. Only a few paces behind. 

Grantaire felt fresh horror rise up to clump in his throat, mingling there with disgust and futile anger at himself. On the left there was a flower shop, on the right was a bar, _dodge that lamppost, don’t trip, look around, only residential buildings –_

With a jolt Grantaire realized that he knew the neighbourhood. He knew that bar. And he knew three people who lived in a flat around here. He skidded to a halt and switched to the other side of the road, running at full tilt while a car screeched to a halt to let him pass. He went right past the door and scrambled back with a flurry of limbs, chest aching with the need for air.

Grantaire smacked his entire palm on the doorbell, again and again and again.

Then, within seconds, Gueulemer was onto him, wrestling him to the ground, breathing heavily and drenched with pungent sweat. “Look at you, playing hide and seek with me. You waggle your arse in our faces during training, you remove your blockers at matches and walk away with the prize money – d’you think that would go unnoticed, huh? You whore.”

“No!” Grantaire bellowed, twisting and turning to dislodge the constricting weight. Panic was rising inside him, the edges of his vision blacking out. His voice was going hoarse, and for a second he feared that it would to fail him altogether. “ _Putain_ , no! Off! Get off!”

Then he was screaming in pain, uncomprehending of anything else.

With his eyes squeezed shut and the rest of the world blocked out, he was almost afloat. Nonsensically, the first thing he thought of was his _jeda_. She was telling him off for staying out all night, her wrinkled hands busy chopping shallots. By Allah, he fucking missed his grandmother. She always let him have _sahlab_ before bed, the milk sweetened just right, spicy with cinnamon and smooth with ground almonds. Fuck, he missed her.

How could he have been so irredeemably stupid?

How?

“– Grantaire? Fuck, he’s passed out! Grantaire?”

Grantaire surged upright, moaning in dismay. He was somehow half-reclining on the pavement. Someone was holding him, pressing bunched up fabric to the side of his neck. Confusedly, his eyes flickered around and found Courfeyrac, who was looking comically pale, suspended in a forward movement. And of course, there was Enjolras.

Enjolras, who was sitting astride someone and beating the ever-loving shit out of them.

“Enjolras!” The person holding him called out, the deep baritone of their voice vibrating through the crisp air. It was Combeferre. Combeferre was holding him.

Grantaire tried to swallow against his nausea, watching on in bewilderment while Courfeyrac jumped as if stung and lunged forward to pull Enjolras off a groaning, cursing, blood spitting Gueulemer.

_Fuck_ , Gueulemer.

“Enjolras, don’t –“

“Listen closely,” Enjolras shook off Courfeyrac’s hold and crouched to the ground again, fists curled into the front of Gueulemer’s jacket. His voice seemed to shatter with force, the cold rage a foreign sound. “We’re going to call the police now. You’ll be apprehended for assault, and it’ll forever tarnish your criminal record. You will lose your occupation, and you will never find respectable work again. The gears of this system will grind you down, and you’ll be entirely deserving of every bit of shit that comes your way. You will _never_ touch him again. Never.”

Grantaire gaped at the scene. He made a pathetic attempt at sitting up and winced when pain shot down his entire torso. Something felt strange and numb, though he couldn’t quite pinpoint it exactly. When he tried to look down the muscles in his neck denied their cooperation with a piercing throb.

“I’m calling the police now,” Courfeyrac declared to the empty street, fumbling for his phone. “Back off him, Enjolras. You’re not doing anyone any favours.”

“ _Putain_ ,” Grantaire heard himself say. Everyone turned to look at him, eyes comically wide. “No police. Please.”

Silence filled the cold night air around them. Gueulemer cursed a few times. His face was already hideously swollen on one side, and the large hook of his nose looked decidedly broken. “You crazy whore, Grantaire,” he said, sounding half-delirious while he got up and staggered for a few steps.

There were a million things Grantaire could’ve told him in that moment, but for some reason, he remained mute. There were no words on his tongue, he struggled to enunciate single syllables. An awful pressure was building inside his chest, and to his own horror the tears simply came, along with a choked-up, wretched sob.

Enjolras took a menacing step forward, his hands curling into fists again. Gueulemer jerked away, eyes darting between the men standing around Grantaire. He made a few more aborted movements, like his body was still deliberating an attack. Then he turned, sturdy legs pumping, stumbling over his own feet a few times before gaining traction. Courfeyrac called out something or other, anger making his voice rough.

Grantaire blinked, once, twice. Within moments his assaulter and would-be rapist had rounded a corner and was gone.

“Courfeyrac. Come help me carry him.” Combeferre was still cradling his skull, hands a firm pressure, thumbs stroking a reassuring pattern against the bones of his jaw. Grantaire stared up at him, momentarily confused. His head was pounding, and for a second he tried to recall whether it had made any contact with the pavement. “Gently, gently. Try to keep him level.”

“ _Putain_ ,” Grantaire said again. Then he was scrambling to free himself from Combeferre’s hold, banging down on all fours. With a retching sound he unloaded the contents of his stomach onto the sidewalk, gagging on the acrid, sour taste of it, mingling on his tongue with the salt of tears. He was minutely aware of everyone crouching around him. After a while, a hand reached to push the mop of hair out of his face. Probably Courfeyrac’s hand.

“We should get you to the hospital, R,” Combeferre’s voice was muted. Someone else made an approving sound. “Should we call an ambulance? Or a taxi?” – “Either should be fine…” – “He’s in shock, _putain_.” – “I can’t believe that son of a dog simply got to leave.” – “Grantaire knew him, we’ll figure out who he is, where he lives…”

A sound was trying to claw its way out of Grantaire’s throat. He moved his lips, the inability to speak blocking his airways. Everything was quite dreamlike: the feel of the pavement beneath his palms; Enjolras’ bruised knuckles within his field of vision; Combeferre holding him like a new-born kitten.

“ _Non_. No to the hospital!” The words burst out of him, and he briefly cherished the cold taste of air while Courfeyrac scrambled to help him sit up.

Then everything came in an angry barrage, white hot and loaded with proverbial gunpowder: “I’m not going to the hospital, nope, that’s a no you’re getting from me. Yes, I’m still alive, and yes, I know where that fucker Gueulemer lives. I’m going to cut off his balls and force feed them to his _grandmère_ , I’m going to shred his cock to fucking ribbons, that complete _branleur_ doesn’t deserve to live, _nique sa mère_ –”

“Grantaire, darling,” Courfeyrac’s pinched face loosened into a relieved grin. “You had us worried there for a second.”

Combeferre gave him an unimpressed look, mouth drawing into a straight line. “You should go to the hospital, still. The bite looks deep.”

“What bite?” Grantaire reached up and instinctively touched the side of his neck. His hand came away slick with blood. “Ah yes. That bite.” A mating bite. Gueulemer had given him a fucking mating bite.

“This is the time and place to quote the greats from literature, lads. Balzac, Verne, Flaubert, Hugo, fucking Émile Zola, who didn’t write about the mating bite? Romeo bit fucking Juliet back in the day, am I right?” 

He realized that an edge of hysteria was creeping into his voice, and he resolutely refused to look at Enjolras. The words leaving his mouth took on a life of their own, as they often did: “Do you people not remember that poem by Théophile Gautier? No? Well, my head is a banged-up garbage can right now, otherwise I’d recite it for you. Or we can call Prouvaire and he’ll do it while I’m indisposed.”

“Biting was declared a second-degree assault in 1972.”

Grantaire snapped his head around to look at Enjolras, immediately wincing at the jolt of movement. He knew that he was still half-delirious from the chase through the city, his head ached with a vengeance and his mouth tasted like a waste bin. Yet the inevitable pleasure still came, the sharp, cutting indulgence of holding Enjolras’ precious attention.

“Oh please, do enlighten me some more,” Grantaire could feel a manic grin spreading over his face. He probably looked a fright, but damn it, he had nothing to lose with Enjolras, not even some timid, bland approximation of friendship. “Read me your latest article on the legal implementation of Omega protection, will you? C’mon, you fountain of knowledge, give me your analysis of Gueulemer fucking chasing me across half of Paris –“

“I’ll write you the report by Thursday,” Enjolras bit back. Colour had risen to the top of his cheekbones, and he looked distinctly unreal under the yellow light of the streetlamp. Simply gazing at him hurt. “You could at least try to take this seriously. Why would you not want the hospital? I can’t even imagine –“

“We need to,” Combeferre said aloud, and for the first time since Grantaire met him, he sounded truly aggravated. “Get Grantaire inside. All of this is rather unhelpful, Enjolras.” He then proceeded to pick up Grantaire like a child, cradling him close and making for the door without another word to his best friend.

Courfeyrac jogged ahead and entered the residential code. Grantaire tried to get another look at Enjolras, but Combeferre’s stern words had pierced the balloon of his bravado. He dared to close his eyes once and found it increasingly hard to keep them open afterwards. His head lolled back while Combeferre lifted him up three flights of stairs. 

Everything was a blur after that. Being deposited on the sofa. Bleeding sluggishly on said sofa. Bottles of anti-sceptic, gauze, Combeferre’s expert hands. Water, lots of water that went down his parched throat.

There was also a heated discussion in whisper-shouts that ended with Enjolras banging the door to his room closed. Grantaire desperately wanted to stay awake and join in on the quiet conversation Combeferre was holding with Courfeyrac. He wanted to know what they were fighting about, he wanted to make things right with Enjolras, or else argue with him some more. He wanted to – he wanted –

Combeferre was picking him up again. He briefly thought about protesting against being carried everywhere bridal style, but the last of his adrenaline was waning, and it left behind an exhaustion so deep he could hardly move his little finger. He was deposited on a bed. Soft covers were pulled up around him. “ _Dors bien_ , R,” someone muttered.

Then a door gently clicked shut, and there was only blessed darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some further reading on European volunteers aiding the Kurdish militia in its fight against ISIS, please refer to [(1)](https://icsr.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/ICSR-Report-Transnational-Volunteers-Against-ISIS.pdf), [(2)](https://jacobinmag.com/2019/08/the-online-left-goes-to-war) and [(3)](https://www.france24.com/en/20180223-syria-afrin-foreigners-westerners-far-left-join-kurdish-revolution-fight-turkey).


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